The Power and the Money

Oh, boy, big mistake

Did I just hear on the BBC that Senator McCain heard the President declare that we would begin arming the Syrian rebels?

OK, I did.

I hope this turns out to be less than meets the eye. Arming the rebels is not going to end well. Syria is not Libya.

UPDATE: Well, limiting the shipments to small arms and ammo is just enough to make things worse without putting Assad under pressure. I see not the point.

If the Qataris and Saudis are not already shipping in enough small arms, then the reason is likely a rebel inability to absorb them.

If the Qataris and Saudis are shipping in enough, then our aid is pointless, unless we have identified a subset of rebels whom we wish to support.

If we have identified a subset of rebels whom we wish to support but whom the Qataris and Saudis do not like, then we are arming a faction to fight a civil war that will follow the civil war.

Assuming that the current civil war ends soon. Which seems unlikely. Unless we send more weapons to the rebels.

I am getting an unpleasant whiff of a cycle here, which could end with American soldiers shooting at Syrians. Syria is not Libya.

Convince me that I am wrong and this is a good idea. Please?

A self-refuting argument for intervention in Syria

The pressure is mounting on the United States to intervene in the Syrian civil war. Yesterday the New York Times ran an op-ed from Bill Keller proposing the following plan.

“President Obama articulates — as he has not done — how the disintegration of Syria represents a serious danger to America’s interests and ideals. The United States moves to assert control of the arming and training of rebels — funneling weapons through the rebel Supreme Military Council, cultivating insurgents who commit to negotiating an orderly transition to a nonsectarian Syria. We make clear to President Assad that if he does not cease his campaign of terror and enter negotiations on a new order, he will pay a heavy price. When he refuses, we send missiles against his military installations until he, or more likely those around him, calculate that they should sue for peace.”

To his credit, Keller recognizes that success is not guaranteed. “It might well be that the internal grievances are too deep and bitter to forestall a bloody period of reprisals. But that outcome is virtually inevitable if we stay out.”

In short: these terrible things will happen without American intervention. Thus we should intervene regardless of our ability to stop them from happening. That would seem to be a self-refuting argument.

I would prefer to be constructive. Keller’s plan leaves six unanswered questions.

1. What do we do if Assad does not negotiate? 
2. What do we do if Assad retreats into the Bekaa Valley under pressure from U.S. airpower?
3. With whom does he negotiate? 
4. Should the negotiations succeed, how do we keep the rebels from fighting among themselves?
5. How do we keep government supporters from continuing to fight even if Assad chooses to surrender?
6. How do we prevent ethnic cleansing in Alawite territories? 

These questions may have answers, although I fear that they will involve boots on the ground and a whole lot of money. I also fear that they may not have answers. Failure, we should remember, is an option.

Not Happy To Be Right

It looks like I’ve won another bet with John Quiggin. February 2013 has come and gone, and Hafez Assad remains in power in Damascus.

If you’re interested in my analysis of the Syrian conflict — and, really, why would you be? — here’s what I wrote two months ago. Basically nothing has changed since then. Assad is still going to lose, it’s still going to take a long time, and a lot of people are going to be killed, maimed, impoverished or otherwise immiserated first.

For the record, here’s what I wrote back in August 2011: “Assad will still be in Syria, and still the leader of an internationally recognized (though very diplomatically isolated) government. It’s possible that he might be assassinated by then, but I don’t think it likely. I don’t see a blue-on-blue coup taking him out now, and I don’t think he’s anywhere close to cutting and running. Foreign military intervention is (for reasons I’ve discussed) unlikely... the regime may well have lost control of large swathes of the country. Syria will probably be increasingly violent, impoverished, and immiserated. And Assad may well be — in effect — just a powerful warlord in a country that has a number of warlords. But he’ll still be there, and will still be at least nominally the head of state. More’s the pity.”

I’ve been arguing with myself as to whether I want to re-up the bet for yet another six months. I’ve won twice now; why not go for the trifecta? Well ... in my opinion, those first two wagers (Assad will last a year beyond August 2011; Assad will last another six months beyond August 2012) were sucker bets. That first bet was something like 10-1 in my favor. I could have lost, but the odds were quite firmly on my side. The next six months... eh, the odds are still on my side. But not by as much. It’s still a good bet, but it’s no longer in the candy-from-a-baby category.

But that’s not why I’m hesitant about betting again. 2-1 is still good odds, after all. But I’m getting a little weary of betting on the loathsome dictator who is plunging his country into blood and horror. “Oh hey, another week, looks like I’m going to take some more of John Quiggin’s money” is fun. “Another week, another thousand people mangled or dead in the Syrian meat grinder” is not. Wagering on the outcome is starting to seem tasteless.

That bet grew out of a debate in August 2013 about dictators. John Quiggin thinks that dictatorship is an institution in decline, and that the number of dictators around the world is likely to decrease; I think that it’s an institution that’s in reasonably good health, and that the number of dictators around the world is likely to remain more or less stable. It’s only 18 months since we started watching this, so it’s certainly too early to declare a trend. But... in that time, the number of dictators has not changed significantly. One dictator (Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia) died of natural causes and has not yet been replaced. Zenawi was an old-fashioned charismatic revolutionary. His replacement as President is a mild-mannered figurehead, with a junta of revolutionary veterans really running things from behind the scenes. Those sorts of arrangements don’t tend to be long-term stable, so let’s see how this evolves over the next little while. Ethiopia’s an interesting place, and I could imagine a range of outcomes, from “heading for liberal democracy! hurrah!” to “more dictatorship” to chaos.

Meanwhile, though, Presidents Bongo of Gabon and Gnassingbe of Togo — two authoritarian African leaders who inherited the positions from their fathers — have both been growing steadily more dictatorial. Bongo, in particular, seems to be evolving into a classic old-fashioned African kleptocrat. I put both these guys on my “borderline” list back in August 2011. Today I’d move Bongo, at least, into the full-fledged dictator category today.

So, no net change. It’s still early days, but I have to say there’s more evidence for a “dictatorship is doing fine, thanks” hypothesis than the “dictatorship is inevitably doomed” position.

Finally, let’s note that Syria is proving a useful cautionary tale for dictators around the world. You want to tacitly tolerate those street protests, people? See where that leads! You want to end up like Syria? Guys like Lukashenka of Belarus and Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan — both of whom were visibly jumpy about the fall of Qaddafi back in August 2011, and clearly concerned that the Arab Spring might be heading their way — have visibly calmed down since then. State-controlled media in authoritarian countries around the world have been quick to depict the Syrian conflict as a plucky Assad attempting to hold the breach against terrorism, civil war, foreign intervention and chaos. At this point the Syrian conflict has turned into a small but real net positive for dictators around the world, and will continue so for a while no matter how it turns out.

Syria in 2013

So we haven’t written much about the war in Syria. Long-time readers of this blog may recall that back in the spring and summer of 2011, we were posting something about the Libyan conflict every couple of weeks or so. Why the relative silence?

Well, a couple of reasons. One, the Syrian conflict is complicated. Libya was a relatively straightforward military struggle, with clearly defined, mostly contiguous areas of rebel and government control. There were fronts and supply lines and any number of classic set-piece battles. You could look at a map and instantly have some notion of what was going on. Syria, not so much.

Two, there was a painful dearth of decent analysis on Libya. I called the date of Qaddafi’s downfall (late August) several months before it actually happened, and I did it using amateur methodology that any bright high school senior could have come up with. What’s striking is not that I got it right but that nobody else did, at least in the public sphere. (In retrospect, it looks to us that the Obama administration and the Pentagon had the same date in mind.) Syria, on the other hand, does not lack for informed commenters; you can begin at Josh Landis’ Syria blog, which is something of a clearinghouse, and then just start clicking through links. There’s enough good stuff out there that I don’t really think I’d be adding much of value.

That said, here are a few throwaway observations.

• Assad loses. The correlation of forces has begun to tilt against him; as with Qaddafi, he’s trying to climb a slope that is only getting steeper. The Russians are backing away (and never provided significant material aid), his army has shrunk down to an Alawite core with unreliable auxiliaries, he’s running out of money, yadda yadda.
• It’s probably going to take a while. Back in August 2011, John Quiggin bet me that Assad wouldn’t last a year; I won that bet. We extended it for another six months, to the end of February 2013. I expect to win that bet too. The regime still has real sources of strength — it controls the capital, has almost all the heavy weaponry, can still access cash and weapons via Iran, the Sunni merchant class hasn’t bolted yet. I don’t dare pick a date, but I think it’s still months and months away. Meanwhile, I’m sorry to say that a lot more people will die, and even more will be impoverished or immiserated. (To understand the dynamics, you could do worse than to read Che Guevara’s book.) 
• It’s not going to destabilize the region. Jordan’s stable in part because its neighbors are so screwed; Jordanians who might be inclined to rock the boat have only to look at Iraq and Syria to reconsider. Israel will be fine, at least until a new Syrian regime gets properly settled in. Iraq’s problems are driven by internal politics, not stuff happening in Syria. The one partial, limited exception is Turkey, where Assad’s clever stroke of liberating his Kurds is having some knock-ons. I can’t however really consider it “destabilizing.” The Turkish state is not at risk and the status quo in Turkey is very unlikely to change. (In fact, there are signs that the fallout from the Syrian civil war may be having a constructive effect.)
• In fact, a surprising thing about Syria is how little impact it’s had on regional and world politics so far.
• Boots-on-the-ground foreign military intervention remains extremely unlikely. No-fly zones or a Libya-style bombing campaign are conceivable but very unlikely any time soon. (There is evidence that Assad considered the use of chemical weapons, which would have prompted intervention, but the operational benefits from doing so were iffy at best and the strategic consequences all negative. This is unlikely to change.) 
• There’s not going to be an Alawite fortress state in the west. (Or at least, not for long.)
• What follows won’t be pretty. The Islamist Menace (UNDER THE BED AND ALWAYS EVIL) is one of the more tiresome tropes of modern U.S. politics. That said, some pretty unsavory types are coming to the fore. The longer the fighting goes on, the worse this is going to get. Post-Assad Syria will be a fissiparous place and probably pretty violent, and the many interests of outside parties aren’t going to make matters any better. When some sort of stability finally does emerge there’s no reason to think that it will be dominated by bien-pensant liberal democrats.

All of these seem pretty obvious, but I emphasize again that I’m not a Syria expert — this is that same “bright high school senior” level of analysis. If I turn out to be right about most or all of this stuff, I’m actually going to be rather annoyed with our foreign policy commentariat.

Syrian September

Four days ago, I wrote this:

Foreign military intervention is (for reasons I’ve discussed) unlikely, though not out of the question; watch for Turkish agitation to create a “safe haven” in northern Syria or rebel attacks on Syrian Air Force bases and other assets. (That Turkish plane that got shot down a few weeks ago? Very probably a probe of Syria’s air defenses. As long as those are still working, military intervention will be hard and expensive. So if the rebels suddenly start going after bases and air defense batteries, then that’ll be suggestive.)

This morning comes the news that Syrian rebels have attacked and looted an air defense base in Eastern Syria. In fact, it looks like this may be part of a sudden shift towards attacking air defense facilities; there was another, separate attack on an airbase yesterday, and one last week that went unnoticed until now.

Now, there are other reasons for the rebels to be attacking airbases. The Air Force is widely and particularly hated — traditionally because it’s long been a stronghold of Alawite influence, more recently because of indiscriminate bombings of civilian neighborhoods. And air defense bases have surface-to-air missiles, which the rebels will be delighted to get their hands on. But multiple attacks on bases and air defense sites in a few days? Yeah, that looks a lot like someone has been whispering in the rebels’ ears.How this plays out... well, I doubt the rebels can severely damage Syria’s air defense capability. But they can definitely degrade it. A lesson going back for decades, to Algeria and Vietnam, is that it’s damnably hard to maintain air bases in the midst of a hostile countryside. (I’m writing this post in Belgrade, Serbia. Belgrade has a fascinating Air Museum out at the airport. It includes half a dozen German and Italian aircraft, captured during WWII when the Yugoslav Partisans launched surprise attacks on Axis airbases in occupied Yugoslavia. The Partisans didn’t capture that many aircraft, of course — most, they just blew up.) It’s not impossible, by any means — that’s another lesson from Vietnam — but the regime will have to allocate money (in short supply) and loyal soldiers (in dangerously short supply) to garrisoning its air bases. Over time, it will probably have to consolidate its air defenses in fewer sites and bases, making it strategically more vulnerable. So, definitely an ominous development.

Now, since this is the Middle East, it’s also possible that there’s a second game. The attacks on airbases may be a signal that someone — the Turks, the West — is getting serious about intervention. A signal to who, though? The regime is probably past caring. The Russians?

Syria: the next six months

Okay, so I’ve won the first bet with John Quiggin. More on that in a bit. Meanwhile: what lies ahead for Syria?

Well, the best summary I’ve yet seen can be found in this excellent article from our friends at the Crisis Group. It’s so good that I’m going to quote it at considerable length.

One is tempted to say that the regime has been uniformly cold-blooded and indiscriminate from the start, but that is not so. The conflict experienced several phases: from the regime’s political concessions, both half-hearted (which prompted stronger popular demands) and coupled with brutal repression (which further undermined their credibility); to its so-called security solution (which, by seeking to force entire communities into submission further energised the opposition and pushed it toward armed resistance); and, finally, to its so-called military solution (a scorched earth policy of rampant destruction and looting that turned what once was viewed as a national army into a broadly reviled occupation force).

With each stage, the regime burned yet another bridge, leaving it with neither way back nor way out. Just as the political solution undermined those involved in politics and the security situation wrecked the security services’ ability to operate, so did the military solution eviscerate the army’s credibility.

This strikes me as a cogent summary of the regime’s shifting strategies over the last 18 months. It’s largely forgotten now, but the Syrian government did attempt to make some minor political concessions, including local and municipal elections in 2011 that were (by Syrian standards) remarkably free and fair. If I were to point to a moment when the political strategy stalled out and failed, it would be the parliamentary elections held earlier this year. The government seems to have dithered at first, then decided that the purpose of elections was not to allow opposing views in the legislature, nor to co-opt moderates and broaden the base of popular support, but to reaffirm the legitimacy of the Baath party and the regime. The result was, unsurprisingly, a landslide “victory” for the Baath and a further alienation of moderate opposition.

One thing that’s not discussed is the regime’s strategy towards the Kurds. Short version: they’ve basically given autonomy and near independence to the Kurds in return for Kurdish neutrality. And they’ve done this by deliberately handing over power to the Kurdish faction that’s associated with the PKK, the anti-Turkish Kurds. This is a calculated risk, because it increases the probability of Turkish intervention in Syria. But it means that the Kurdish regions will be run by people who are violently hostile to the opposition forces that are backed by, or friendly with, Turkey. From here it looks like a thoughtful strategy that is, so far, paying off — while there are a few small Kurdish groups working with the opposition, the majority of Kurds look likely to sit this thing out.

As to what may happen going forward, the article offers this bracing analysis:

Of all the ongoing changes, perhaps the most significant and least appreciated is what, over time, has become of the regime. The one that existed at the outset of the conflict almost certainly could not have survived the spectacular killing of top officials in the heart of its traditional stronghold; street combat in Damascus, Aleppo and a string of other towns; the loss of important border crossings with Turkey and Iraq; all amid near-total economic devastation and diplomatic opprobrium. That, a year and a half later, its new incarnation not only withstood those blows but vigorously counterpunched sends a message worthy of reflection.

As its political backbone disintegrates, the regime is being reduced to its repressive apparatus, while the latter itself gradually morphs into an entity more akin to a militia than an army in both make-up and ethos. The regime essentially has been stripped down to a broadly cohesive, hardcore faction fighting an increasingly bitter, fierce and naked struggle for collective survival. It is mutating in ways that make it impervious to political and military setbacks, indifferent to pressure and unable to negotiate. Opposition gains terrify Alawites, who stand more firmly by the regime’s side. Defections solidify the ranks of those who remain loyal. Territorial losses can be dismissed for the sake of concentrating on “useful” geographic areas. Sanctions give rise to an economy of violence wherein pillaging, looting and smuggling ensure self-sufficiency and over which punitive measures have virtually no bearing.

That the regime has been weakened is incontrovertible. But it has been weakened in ways that strengthen its staying power. (emphasis ours)

The regime has been undergoing a very rapid Nietzschean “what does not kill us” evolution. It has become much less effective as a government — indeed, it may end up hardly being a government at all. But it has become much more effective at surviving. And this leads to a sobering conclusion:

There can be nothing more to expect from a regime that, by its very nature – never much of an institutionalised state, no longer genuinely a political entity – has ceased being in a position to compromise, respond to pressure or inducement or offer a viable solution. Which means that the traditional international panoply of actions, from public blandishments to condemnation, from threats to sanctions, is not about to work. And that, while one still can hold out hope for a “clean break,” that moment when the regime neatly collapses or surrenders, it hardly warrants holding one’s breath.

This leads to my own tentative prediction (which matches my co-blogger’s assessment): six months from now, Assad will still be in Syria, and still the leader of an internationally recognized (though very diplomatically isolated) government. It’s possible that he might be assassinated by then, but I don’t think it likely. I don’t see a blue-on-blue coup taking him out now, and I don’t think he’s anywhere close to cutting and running. Foreign military intervention is (for reasons I’ve discussed) unlikely, though not out of the question; watch for Turkish agitation to create a “safe haven” in northern Syria or rebel attacks on Syrian Air Force bases and other assets. (That Turkish plane that got shot down a few weeks ago? Very probably a probe of Syria’s air defenses. As long as those are still working, military intervention will be hard and expensive. So if the rebels suddenly start going after bases and air defense batteries, then that’ll be suggestive.)

Six months from now, the regime may well have lost control of large swathes of the country. Syria will probably be increasingly violent, impoverished, and immiserated. And Assad may well be — in effect — just a powerful warlord in a country that has a number of warlords. But he’ll still be there, and will still be at least nominally the head of state. More’s the pity.

Counting chickens, jumping guns

So I think my first bet on the Assad regime is looking pretty safe. For those of you coming late, a year ago I bet that Syrian dictator Bashir Assad would still be in power one year later — that is, at 5:00pm EST on August 31, 2012. John Quiggin of Crooked Timber took the other side. The loser will pay $50 to a charity of the winner’s choice.

A quick glance at the calendar will show that I haven’t won this yet. In theory, the rebels could storm the presidential palace tomorrow. Or Assad could get on a flight to Moscow next Tuesday bound for a long quiet retirement in a beachside villa outside of Uglegorsk. But I don’t think it’s very likely. Assad has some problems! But he’s probably not going to fall in the next 18 days.

Close followers of this blog may recall that back in April, I challenged John to a second bet: viz., that Assad would continue in office for another six months beyond August 31. He accepted. So it’s entirely possible that I could win this bet, but lose the second one. These things happen; let’s see how it goes.

Meanwhile, two things. First, you may recall that this bet arose out of a more general discussion on the topic of dictators and their place in the world of the early 21st century. I’m mulling over a “one year later” post on this topic. Comments and suggestions are welcome! Second, I have to think about what charity I’d like John to pay his $50 towards. Suggestions on this are most definitely welcome. (No, I’m not going to ask him to contribute $50 to the Scaife Foundation. Play nice.)

The French won in Algeria, and that is why Assad will lose in Syria

A few posts ago, I noted that the French won the Algerian War militarily. My co-blogger has scolded me for being deliberately misleading. He is correct. The discussions with Lebanese army officers that produced the post were actually discussions about why the French experience illustrates why Assad is going to lose.

The French Army had three key advantages that Assad does not have. Moreover, at least one of the reasons why De Gaulle decided to abandon that military victory also apply. First, what advantages did the French have that Assad does not? First, French troop levels (proportional to the Algerian population) were four times the levels that Assad can muster. In theory, Assad can call up reservists and increase draft calls. In practice, that will not work.

Second,the French Army could draw on the resources of the Hexagon. In effect, it was financed by a large industrial power. Assad has ... nothing, except in Michael Ignatieff’s fever dreams.

Finally, troops could not and would not defect during the Algerian War. No matter how far morale declined (and it actually did not decline all that far) defection was simply not in their opportunity set. That is not true of Assad.

There are two more differences, but they are actually an epiphenomena of the above three French advantages. The French could credibly commit to remaining in control indefinitely. That commitment reduced the willingness to fight among the Algerian population. (That commitment turned out to be wrong, of course ... but in 1958 it seemed much more likely that France would be sovereign in Algeria in 1968 that it does that the Baath Party will still rule Syria in 2022.) In addition, the French army had the resources to engage large-scale population resettlements ... something far beyond Assad’s reach.

In other words, the reasons why France won in Algeria show why Assad is going to lose.

The problem is that he is going to lose slowly. He can easily fight on for another few months, although the correlation of forces has turned against him. De Gaulle abandoned the victory because of international pressure and because there were no real advantages (other than access to oil, which the Evian Agreements let France keep) to hanging on. The first applies to Assad. The second not so much.

What could change that timeline? Large-scale support for the rebels, which still does not seem to be happening, or a coup.

I see no signs of a coup, but I am not a Syria expert.

Remember, France won the Algerian War

Really. It did. Militarily, the French army destroyed the FLN by the end of 1958.

Had France not possessed a democratic government, Algeria would have remained a part of France for a very long time. This has bearing on the Syrian civil war. Hopefully, Doug and I will have time to explain why in the near future. For now, we leave it as an exercise for the reader.

The rebels’ big problem is the lack of a unified chain of command. As a result, they screw up operationally what they win tactically. The regime’s big problem is a lack of manpower. Roughly 200,000 loyalist troops are trying to defeat 40,000 insurgents.

Consider the difficulties. It needs to stop the fighting from spreading further around Aleppo. (Rebels entered the city today.) It also needs to take on and reoccupy the rebel strongholds around Homs. Finally, it needs to prevent the rebels from operating freely around Idlib and Hama. That is a tall order.

The problem is that Assad is on course to defeat, but not quickly, and not against a unified force. There is no FLN ready to take over. There are only two ways to end it quickly, neither likely. One, outsiders can pick a rebel force and back it. Two, the Russians (or somebody) can give the Syrian army the resources it needs to massively expand the draft and go on the offensive without risking the areas it currently holds. (It is now trying to substitute capital for labor, by using artillery and helicopter gunships.)

I bet that Assad will make it to the end of the calendar year, just not really in power.

Another good reason Michael Ignatieff is not Prime Minister of Canada

He has a rather odd understanding of foreign affairs. This essay reads like a fever dream from a disillusioned neocon. Oh, wait ...

No, seriously, go read it. It is very odd. In its world, an allied Russia and China are backing the Syrian regime against the United States. You would get the impression that Bashir Assad is Ho Chi Minh. You wouldn’t learn that Russian “support” for Assad consists of, well, nothing. Sure, the Russian Federation has sold the Syrian Arab Republic a lot of weapons in the recent past, but that’s not the same thing as conducting “a proxy war between the Great Powers.”

Seriously, three attack helicopters is nothing compared to the massive amounts of materiel that went through Haiphong or over the Chinese border. Here is a CIA estimate of around 2,000 Soviet air defense personnel in North Vietnam circa 1965. There is also a frustratingly vague CIA estimate of Soviet military aid at the beginning of the war, but it gives some sense of the scale, and it dwarfs anything going to Syria. More information is in this 1968 CIA report about Sino-Soviet conflicts regarding military aid to the DRV. The discussion is over trainloads, for months, and massive airlifts, and shipments through Haiphong ... including potential Soviet military responses to a U.S. blockade.

And then the money document from 1968: go down to the last two pages. 2,230 artillery pieces in 1967! 70,000 tons of ammunition! 3,810 surface-to-air missiles! 123 armored vehicles! 700 vehicles from China, another 24,000 tons of ammunition, and 61 MiG fighter jets!

(By the way, did you know the U.S. operated unmanned drones in Vietnam? Page 2.)

Dude, that was a proxy war. This is Russia and China being annoying.

If you want some more serious intel about the Syrian civil war, this report is a good place to start. You also might want to check out this report about the Russian equipment used by the Syrian government. But Ignatieff’s essay is just completely goofy. Good thing he didn’t become Prime Minister. At least Canada doesn’t have the capability to act on the ahistorical bizarro-world musings of its head of government.

Partitioning Syria

We haven’t talked much about Syria lately. Here follows some speculation.

Assume for argument’s sake that Assad can’t defeat the rebels, but neither can they ovethrow him. Say a year passes, and the rebels get better armed and organized, and maybe they gain actual control over large chunks of land — but the Alawites stand firm around Assad, Russia and Iran continue their support, and no foreign military power is willing to actually intervene with troops on the ground or air strikes. What happens then?

Could Assad gives up much of Syria in order to consolidate his people into a new, Alawite-dominated state along the coast? It’s largely forgotten today outside of Syria, but exactly such a state existed under the French Mandate, from 1922 to 1936. The French did it in order to break up and weaken Syrian nationalism, of course, but older Alawites remember that their parents and grandparents were perfectly content under L’Etat des Alouites.

How to make this work? Well, there are three possible scenarios. Let’s game them out.

Scenario #1: The Lion’s Share. So you’re Assad, and you’ve decided to split the country in two. You want to get rid of as many treacherous, disloyal Sunni Arabs as possible, but you also want to keep as much territory as you possibly can. In this scenario, you make territory a priority.

Starting in the north, you try to hang on to Aleppo if possible. Yeah, a lot of Sunnis there. You’ll have to either placate, pacify or expel them. But Aleppo is the country’s biggest city, strategically important in all kinds of ways, and the center of its industrial base. So, keep Aleppo. Now draw a line just east of the Homs-Aleppo rail line. The bone in the throat here is Hamah — large city, conservative, Sunni, traditionally hostile to the regime. So evacuate the few friendlies — mostly the few local Christians — then bomb and shell it to rubble, then drive everyone out. (Did I mention that this scenario involves some vigorous ethnic cleansing? Because it does. Very vigorous. But when it comes right down to it that’s what you have an Alawite-dominated army for.)

You want to swing south to include greater Damascus: more industry, plus legitimacy. (We hold the capital!) As with Aleppo, you’ll have to do a lot of cleansing: omelettes, eggs. Some Sunnis will stay, if not loyal, at least neutral. If they’re economically useful, keep them. Draw your border sharply south of Damascus, because honestly you don’t really care about the Golan — let the other guys take up that quarrel with Israel.

You can’t get everyone inside the tent, so don’t go crazy trying. Let the Kurds in the northwest go hang; you never liked them anyway. You may or may not try to rescue the scattered Christian communities around the country — they’ve been junior partners in Alawite rule for 50 years now, and will be understandably nervous of coming under a Sunni-majority regime that’s likely to be Islamist. If they’re loyal, grab as many as you can. In general, you really need as many as possible of the non-Sunni Arab groups — the Christians, Druze, Circassians and other odds and ends — on side to make this work, so outreach to them should be an integral part of your strategy.

Natural resources: You’re giving up all the oil and natural gas in the east, alas. But you’ve got the coast — if you’ve played this right, you should have all the coast — and the pipeline terminal. You’re giving up ~80% of the country’s area, but a lot of that is lightly populated scrubland or desert. And you’re keeping most of the good stuff — the ports, the biggest cities, most of the industry, most of the water. And your new country is still respectably large: say eight or nine million people in an area of maybe 30,000 square kilometers, about the size of Belgium. In round-ish numbers, it’s maybe 30% Alawite, 40% Christians-Druze-Turkoman-Circassian-whoever — basically, all the ethnic and religious minorities you could convince — and maybe 30% Sunni Arabs. Your ruling ideology will be firmly secular and probably kinda fascistic.

Does this work? — Well, honestly, probably not. One, Syrian nationalism is a real and potent force, so dividing the country won’t be easy. Two, there isn’t really a natural borderline — “a few kilometers east of the M1 highway” doesn’t really do it. You’re kind of trying to pull a Chiang Kai-Shek without the advantage of being on an island. Three, you’ll have to expel a lot of people — millions of people — to make sure your new state is properly Alawite-dominated. I’m honestly not sure the Syrian military and security forces have the capacity to carry this out. Moreover, attempts to do so would invite large-scale external intervention.

Okay, so let’s try Scenario #2: Road to Damascus. This is the same as above, but with this difference: you give up Aleppo. In fact, you give up everything north of Hama. (You can still bomb and shell it, of course.) Basically, you’re just trying to keep Greater Damascus, the ethnically mixed (and relatively regime-loyal) mountains and coastal strip, and a corridor between them.

The good news is, this scenario gives you a more Alawite-dominated rump Syria; Alawites are now around 40% of the population and are the largest single ethnic group. The bad news ... well, there’s a lot of bad news. The Sunnis now have over 80% of the land, most of the population, a fair chunk of the industry, and long land borders with Turkey and Iraq. This is a recipe for protracted civil war, and it’s a civil war you’ll have trouble winning. The major strategic problem is that Damascus is 250 km away from your Alawite homeland, and there’s no good road or rail connection between them. You’re trying to hang on to a long, broken-backed slice of territory that doesn’t make any sort of strategic sense. Perhaps this scenario could happen as the result of long war followed by a peace of exhaustion, but it’s not anything you’d actually try to make happen.

That leaves us with Scenario #3: The Alawite Redoubt. In this one, you pull back to the Alawite homelands — basically the coastal strip and the mountains behind it. As before, you bring in as many Christians and other friendly minorities as possible. Your new state will be majority Alawite, and it will make strategic sense and will be relatively dependable.

Unfortunately, it will also be small. Very small. Probably too small to be viable, given a hostile Sunni rest-of-Syria. Giving up Damascus means giving up international legitimacy — even the Chinese are probably going to switch sides once the rebels control the capital and 90% of the country. Your enemies will outnumber you four or five to one, and who will have most of the country’s resources and industry. NATO can blockade you until your enemies gather enough force to come over the mountains from the east and crush you once and for all. This could be the last phase of a civil war but, again, it’s not anything you should be actively trying for.

So, in summary, there are no good choices. Option #1 is perhaps the least bad, but it’s probably not within your reach.

What then should Assad do? Well, that’s a question for another post.

Betting on Assad, again

 Back in August, I made a bet with John Quiggin of Crooked Timber. He thought the troubles in Syria meant that Bashir Assad was going down soon. I disagreed. So we bet on whether the Syrian President would make it through a year. The bet has about four months left to run, but I have to say it’s looking like Assad will cover the spread. If you’ve been paying a bit of attention to matters Syrian, you’ll know that there’s a UN ceasefire in place; if you’ve been paying closer attention, you’ll know that this is mostly gravy for Assad, since it gives him breathing space and provides the possibility of muddying the waters by waiting for the demonstrators (or a conveniently placed provocateur) to shoot first.

I could be wrong! I’d be happy to be wrong. Well, happy-ish, since I don’t think that whatever follows Assad is going to be all that pleasant either. But really, this is a bet I’d be perfectly content to lose.

John Quiggin and I exchanged e-mails recently, and he said that while August may be looking sketchy, he still thinks that Assad’s departure is “virtually certain” and is “confident that he will go sooner or later.” Well, perhaps. But, you know, in the long run we are all dead.

Anyway. We also agreed to add a new bet on top of the existing one. It has precisely the same terms — $50 to the charity of the winner’s choice, bet is annulled if Assad dies or is killed while still in office — except that it will begin on September 1 of this year, and run until COB February 28, 2013. Basically we’re betting on the six months after the first bet expires.

And why am I so confident that Assad will stay in power? Well, pretty much what I said back in December:

Assad is not likely to flee the country; he’ll stand or die. The military and security forces are still completely dominated by his fellow Alawites. The Alawites are about an eighth of the population, and they’re absolutely certain that the fall of the current regime will lead to a genocidal bloodbath against them. Even if it doesn’t, they’re sure to lose their current privileged position. So the Alawites are not giving in, either. The reason the regime has not been able to crush the opposition yet is because there aren’t enough Alawites; they dominate the security services and the officer corps of the military, but the actual army is a bunch of poorly trained young draftees whose reliability is uncertain. So simply crushing the rebellion by brute force — as Assad pere did in Hama back in 1982, when he flattened the city to rubble and killed an estimated 20,000 civilians — is not as easy as it looks. But on the other hand, those conscripts can’t easily lead a rebellion either. It’s a recipe for stalemate: the rebels can’t easily be crushed, but neither will the Army turn against the regime.

So, none of that has changed. Syria’s economy has tanked; that hasn’t actually done Assad much harm. Russia has backed off a bit since the Russian presidential election, but it obviously still considers Assad a client, and will probably continue to support him as long as it can be done on the cheap. Iran is still a firm and reliable ally. NATO is not going to do anything. Israel has no desire to replace the hostile but predictable Assad regime with chaos or a bunch of Islamists. Turkey is unhappy, but has reached the limits of what it’s willing to do, at least for now. Yadda yadda, und so weiter, bla bla bla. As I’ve said, I’ll be happy enough to be wrong.

In which I double down on Assad’s survival

 Back in August, I made a bet with John Quiggin of Crooked Timber. Midway through a long comment thread, John said, “I’d be happy to take Assad as a test case. Doug sees him as a likely survivor, I don’t.”

I replied:

I like Assad’s chances. He’s not the brightest bulb on the tree, at all. But he’s not the sort who’s going to flee the country just because things have gone a little hinky, either. And he’s got some good cards in his hand. The military and security forces are totally dominated by his fellow Alawites; NATO is never going to intervene; the Russians are running interference for him in the UNSC; Iran is firmly on side; the opposition is divided and lacks credible leadership; the Israelis are quietly rooting for him; and the anarchy and chaos of postwar Iraq is still fresh in everyone’s mind.

Sure, Assad could fall. Stranger things have happened. I can easily imagine a couple of scenarios, especially if the West plays it smart. (Targeted economic sanctions for this one. No military intervention.) But I don’t think it’s the way to bet.

Come to think of it, why don’t we do just that? Side bet: if Assad loses power in the next six months — flees the country, overthrown in a coup, taken out and shot, what have you — you win. If he’s still in power on March 1, 2012, then I win. (If he dies or is killed without first losing power, or if he’s lost control of at least 1/3 of the country but is still clinging to power in the capital, we’ll call it a draw.)

Loser donates $50 to a charity of the winner’s choice. And if I lose, I’ll throw in a “Why I Was Wrong” post over at Noel Maurer’s blog, gratis.

John then said: “I’d want a year from now... the process is a protracted one.”

To which I responded: “[If] Assad does fall, I don’t think the process will be very protracted. He has all the top military and security commanders on side, and the dissidents have no guns and no hope of military intervention. So the most likely scenario would be an internal coup by his fellow Alawites — the generals and secret police deciding to throw him overboard. That’s going to happen fast if it happens at all. But anyway. Sure, I’ll go with a year. I’m betting Assad will still be in power at COB Syrian time on August 31, 2012. You’re betting he won’t.”

Over 100 days have passed since our bet. During that time, the uprising has continued without a break, and an estimated 2,000 additional people have been killed. In an unprecedented move, the Arab League has voted to sanction Syria. Even neighboring King Abdullah of Jordan — one of the least confrontational, most conservative of Arab leaders — has risen up to condemn Assad. The rebels have developed a rudimentary leadership structure, the Syrian National Council, with a command based in neighboring Turkey. The Syrian Army has seen a steady stream of defections. Syria’s economy is in deep trouble as trade has declined and tourism has vanished. Even Fareed Zakaria has changed his mind, writing, “I now think this regime is going to collapse after all.”

So what do I think now?

I think Assad will still be in power on August 31, 2012.

None of the things I mentioned in my original post have changed. Assad is not likely to flee the country; he’ll stand or die. The military and security forces are still completely dominated by his fellow Alawites. The Alawites are about an eighth of the population, and they’re absolutely certain that the fall of the current regime will lead to a genocidal bloodbath against them. Even if it doesn’t, they’re sure to lose their current privileged position. So the Alawites are not giving in, either. The reason the regime has not been able to crush the opposition yet is because there aren’t enough Alawites; they dominate the security services and the officer corps of the military, but the actual army is a bunch of poorly trained young draftees whose reliability is uncertain. So simply crushing the rebellion by brute force — as Assad pere did in Hama back in 1982, when he flattened the city to rubble and killed an estimated 20,000 civilians — is not as easy as it looks. But on the other hand, those conscripts can’t easily lead a rebellion either. It’s a recipe for stalemate: the rebels can’t easily be crushed, but neither will the Army turn against the regime.

Meanwhile, foreign intervention is right out. NATO is never going to intervene — see the reasons for that in this post — and the Russians are still loyal allies, running diplomatic interference for Assad while firmly vetoing any meaningful Security Council Resolution. In fact, the Russians just closed a major arms deal with the Syrian government, delivering a bunch of shore-launched antiship missiles. Which is not only a gesture of friendship but a quiet middle finger to NATO; if they do try intervening, they’ll have to deal with supersonic cruise missiles. (That thing where France parked the Charles de Gaulle a few miles off the Libyan coast so the big aircraft carrier could launch strikes all over the place? That would not happen in Syria.) Iran is still firmly on side. The Israelis are still quietly rooting for Assad. The only remotely plausible source of foreign intervention is Turkey — and while Erdogan is clearly very pissed, his country is not really in a position to launch a full-scale invasion of Syria. Support to rebels on the cheap, sure; and if the rebels were ever to gain serious traction, I could imagine a future where Turkey gave significant military assistance to them. But supporting the rebels is not without costs — Assad has made it clear that he’s going to counter tit-for-tat by supporting Kurdish separatists inside Turkey. Moreover, Turkish assistance alone is not nearly enough, until and unless the rebels can gain control of large chunks of Syria’s territory. And that’s not happening.

I’ll say again that nothing is certain and things could change. But I’m just not seeing how the rebels get to victory from here in the next nine months. If Assad does fall, the most likely outcome is that his generals or his inner circle take him out in a coup, blue-on-blue, hoping that they can save the regime by changing its face.

Incidentally, it appears that the folks at Intrade agree with me. They’re giving him a 90% chance to survive into 2012, a 67% chance to reach June 30, and a 55% chance to still be in power on December 31, 2012.

I’m not picking my charity yet. But I am saying that the deep dynamics of this struggle have hardly changed. I would give the rebels slightly better odds today than I would have in August — but “slightly better” here means I think their chances have risen from less than 5% to maybe more like 10%. It’s still long odds.

As noted before, I’d be tolerably happy to be wrong.  But meanwhile, yeah, doubling down.

Department of Obvious: Syria is not Libya

 This has become a fairly handy idiot test.

Short version: intervening in Syria would be much, much harder and more expensive than intervening in Libya. This was true back in March, and it’s still true today.
 
(1) The uprising in Syria has never remotely approached the success of the uprising in Libya. Syria has seen a bunch of large, sustained protests and demonstrations. That’s great! But Libya saw the effective secession of almost half the country. By the middle of March, the rebels controlled the country’s second largest city. About a fifth of the country’s area and maybe a third of its population had passed completely out of government control. Major government military units had gone over to the rebel’s side. Nothing like that has happened in Syria.

(2) Syria has an actual, functioning air force. This is in sharp contrast to Libya, which did not. Syria actually has late-ish model planes, pilots who know how to fly them, and some semblance of a professional administrative and logistical infrastructure to support them. No, the Syrians couldn’t stand up to a sustained war with NATO — but they exist, and would have to be dealt with.

(3) Syria has an actual, functioning air defense system. Again a sharp contrast to Libya. As with the air force, it could be dealt with — but it would take time, and would likely cost casualties.

(4) Syria’s in a much, much more delicate and complicated location. Just look at a map. Taking Gaddafi out was relatively easy — Egypt and Tunisia just had their revolutions, and nobody cares much about Chad. But Syria? Israel, Iraq, Turkey, Lebanon. What a nightmare. Do I need to spell out why this makes everything much harder and more fraught?

(5) Assad is much less diplomatically isolated than Gaddafi. By 2010, the Brother Leader had managed to alienate or annoy pretty much everyone. Even the Arab League openly despised him. His nominal “friends” in the Mediterranean — most notably Berlusconi’s government in Italy — turned out to be fair-weather indeed. Russia restricted itself to tut-tuts from a distance. Only in Sub-Saharan Africa did he have any real allies left, and the plain sad fact is that Niger and Senegal just don’t count for much when you’ve got the United States, United Kingdom, and French Republic all lined up against you. With bombs.

Assad, on the other hand, is a respected member of the international club. He’s a dictator, but he’s not a flake. He’s a reasonable neighbor. (Well, unless you’re Lebanese. More accurately, a Lebanese of a certain political flavor.) The Arab League is never going to pass a resolution approving force against him. And the Russians are likely to veto anything in the Security Council — they’re much closer to him than they ever were to Gaddafi. They’ve had a small naval base at the Syrian port of Tartus since the 1970s, and they’ve sold weapons to the Syrians since forever.

In fact, the Russians were just closing a deal to sell Syria a bunch of Yakhont antiship missiles when the uprising started. The Yakhont is basically a bigger, dumber Exocet; a supersonic cruise missile designed to kill large ships from far away. Israel vigorously protested the deal, for fear Syria would pass a couple along to Hezbollah. (Hezbollah blew a massive hole in an Israeli corvette a few years back using a crappy little Chinese C-802, and my co-blogger will eventually post something about his research on the brewing conflict over Israel’s new offshore gas fields,  so it’s a quite reasonable fear.) Remember how in Libya, we had capital ships hanging around just offshore from Tripoli, and the Charles de Gaulle parked conveniently just a bit further out? That wouldn’t happen in Syria; even the faint possibility of shore launched cruise missiles would make any sane admiral pull his ships well back over the horizon.
 
Oh, and he’s got the Iranians on side, at least for the moment. I think the Iranians would switch sides in a flash, if they thought it was in their interest — but until they reach that point, they’re backing him firmly. (They just replaced their ambassador to Damascus with a hardliner with ties to the Revolutionary Guards.)

(6) Assad is much less physically isolated than Gaddafi. Libya looks like a solid block of territory, but in fact it’s like Canada — a long, thin populated strip and a vast empty hinterland. 90% of the population lives within 100 km of the coast. The civil war cut that strip in two, east and west. Gaddafi had an open path to the south, but as supply lines they were meaningless; an 800 km drive across desert, and then you’re in Niger. (A country whose major resources are under French control.) With NATO controlling the seas, virtually everything in Gaddafi’s territory had to come in or out through Tunisia, most of it on a single coastal road. The moment the rebels cut that road was the moment when everything changed for good.

There’s nothing like this in Syria, which has well-developed land links to all its neighbors except Israel. And most of Syria’s coast is actually Lebanon. Nobody’s going to blockade Lebanon. As with the air defenses, this is a solvable issue — but it makes everything much, much more difficult and expensive.

So, to summarize:

• Military intervention in Syria would be incredibly expensive and difficult, would have to overcome serious diplomatic obstacles, and would likely involve significant losses and casualties. This has always been true, and will probably continue to be true for some time to come. Therefore, it is very unlikely to happen.
• Because military intervention is unlikely, any uprising against Assad will have to succeed or fail without it, as did the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt. I judge this unlikely, but that’s an issue for another post.
• If someone says “our intervention in Libya prevented us from intervening in Syria,” then you may immediately begin heavily discounting, or completely ignoring, anything else they have to say on the topic. (This goes double if they suggest that the reason is “Syria has no oil.”) If someone suggests that we should intervene in Syria, same-same.

I wish the Syrian people good luck in getting rid of the loathsome Assad regime. But the plain fact is, they’ll have to do it without direct military help from us.