The Power and the Money

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.