If they occur, as promised, in June – before the US election – the most likely outcome is more stalling and no progress.  But that is not because there has been no prior interest on the Western side in making big concessions in order to get an agreement.  What Iran is doing actually amounts to avoiding being presented with a favorable agreement.  The abruptness of the talks’ end indicates mostly that Iran doesn’t see it as advantageous to stick around and talk anymore, in spite of (or perhaps because of) the P5+1’s anxiety to negotiate a good deal for Iran.

As for Putin, his proximate reason for not attending the summit is obvious.  Missile defense was – as always, over the last decade – to be one of the two main topics in Chicago, the other being Afghanistan.  The collective NATO missile defense system for Europe was to be declared operational at the summit.  It was.  Russia’s main bone of contention with NATO is missile defense.  Although Russia has been invited to be a missile defense partner with NATO, and has participated in extensive talks on the matter, there remain fundamental disagreements between the parties over how to operate and orient a collective missile defense.

Putin had no intention of being present for photo ops under a “NATO missile defense” banner – in spite of President Obama’s assurance to Dmitry Medvedev that the US would be more “flexible” about the whole thing after our November election.  Putin’s reluctance is partly because Obama’s NATO allies have a different view.  They aren’t interested at all in more “flexibility”:  the Europeans, in their own special way, have actually been quite stringent on the need for missile defense, determined to go ahead with it for political purposes if not for the capabilities of the inaugural system.  The initial capability relies entirely on US Aegis warships being stationed in the Black Sea or Eastern Mediterranean, along with an early warning radar in Turkey whose data the Turks – against NATO policy – don’t want shared with Israel.  The vulnerabilities of this initial set-up are obvious, but for the Europeans, the point is the show of commitment.

Writing at NRO earlier this month, Daniel Vajdic assessed Putin as increasingly detached from reality.  I’m not so sure it’s Putin who’s in that condition.

If Greece leaves the Eurozone rather than staying in and swallowing some very nasty-tasting medicine, who will come to Greece’s aid?  The door will be open to Russia, in a way it wasn’t in 2010 when reports abounded that Russia offered Greece a 25-billion-Euro loan, but was rejected by the Greek leadership due to opposition from the EU and US.  Russia is already keeping Cyprus afloat, and has for centuries had a national interest in maintaining the principal geopolitical influence over Southeastern Europe.  Russia and Greece have begun a significant naval rapprochement – but that’s not the only rapprochement going on between the two Orthodox Christian nations.  Russian businessmen promised in September 2011 that Russian investment in Greece would be increasing dramatically, a credible promise given the level of investment Russia (and China) already had in Greek infrastructure.  As the Eurozone crisis rages – literally, at this exact moment – the second Greece-Russia Investment Conference is unfolding on the island of Evia.

The leaders of Europe have a problem.  If they effectively force Greece out – a move that would be understandable from a fiscal and monetary perspective – they will have to outbid Russia if they want to turn around and buy Greece back.  The implications for NATO are as uncertain as anything else.  A NATO missile defense, opposed by Russia and relying on the nations and waterways around Greece?  America has to be acting like the alpha dog to make that one work.

And we’re not.  There are a couple of potential factors in the decisions of Putin and the mullahs not to treat seriously with the US, for the time being, on the most important security matters.  One of them is that the US has little credibility as an enforcer.  What are we going to do if Iran cuts off nuclear talks?  Demand more talks?  Obama pre-neutralized US credibility on missile defense with his “flexibility” promise to the Russians; why come to the NATO summit when you can just wait for a collapse of American will after the US election?

Waiting could turn out to produce much bigger benefits than trying to fit into today’s American-sponsored multilateral efforts.  The second factor, which is both cause and effect of all the others, is that the world’s correlation of geopolitical power is changing.  It’s already happening.  The strong potential for Greece’s departure from the Eurozone is just the best publicized, most urgent of the current developments.

But there are others, like Japan’s growing concern over the predations of Russia and China on islands long claimed by Tokyo.  In early May, Japan made the unprecedented move of proposing that Russia return only two of the four northern islands – the Kuril Islands – claimed by Japan but occupied by Russia since World War II.  This is a major concession, and is undoubtedly related to the growing belligerence of China over the Senkaku Islands on the other end of Japan.

It may well have been encouraged in part by the Russian strategic bomber exercise in April that saw 40 bomber aircraft flying just outside Japanese airspace, along with the near-simultaneous naval exercise between Russia and China in the Yellow Sea (the first such exercise ever conducted).  Japan can ill afford to be in armed disputes on both ends of her archipelagic territory, but neither can she afford to suffer humiliating losses in those disputes.  Asia is not a good place to appear weak or friendless; Japan will want to be on better terms with one of the land powers at any given time, and it appears Russia is Tokyo’s first choice.

In theory, Japan should be able to rely on the support of her principal ally, the United States.  Our posture on the Senkaku Islands dispute is that it must be resolved through negotiation, not through force majeure.  On the Kurils, we have explicitly supported Japan’s claim since 1952 – but early in 2011, when Russian plans to upgrade the weaponry on the islands made headlines, our embassy in Moscow hid behind the claim of a media misstatement, when the Russian foreign ministry complained about our position on the matter.

If Obama is shifting our security focus to the Far East, one thing he will have to understand is that the resolution of our allies’ territorial problems is the hinge-point of our effectiveness.  We don’t weigh in on the negotiations; that’s for the parties to work out.  But we do back our allies up.  The problems may not seem big or important, but the security context we set for the resolution of these issues is what makes it useful – or not – to be an ally of the United States.

The questions are (a) whether Obama can understand and act on that reality, or (b) whether it even matters all that much at this point.  There will be no magic pill in the election of anyone to the Oval Office this fall; a switch of administrations will probably produce a brief hiatus, but will also represent an opportunity for status quo-busters.  Things have changed so much already that the political constructs within which the US and Europe operate too frequently come off now as complacent, head-in-the-sand pieties.  The holiday from history is over, although we may be the last ones to see it.  Neither Russia nor Iran – nor China, North Korea, or Syria, for that matter – is very interested in signing anything with the West right now.  Good deals based on the old assumptions aren’t as tempting when better ones seem to lie just over the horizon.

J.E. Dyer’s articles have appeared at The Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions,” Patheos, The Weekly Standard online, and her own blog, The Optimistic Conservative.

“It would have been better to solve it (the Iranian nuclear crisis) in a diplomatic way, by using pressure and without applying military force,” the ambassador clarified at the closed meeting, “But that does not mean that this [attack] option is not possible. Not only is it possible, it is ready. The necessary planning is in place to make sure it’s ready.”

Well, OK.  The question is not whether we are ready or should be ready for this option – um, of course we are; would we tell anyone if we weren’t? – the question is why our ambassador in Israel would say this.  (Read the full comments for the unnecessarily explicit flavor.)

First of all, an ambassador – or at least his top advisors – knows that bellicose comments of this kind do not accord with the conventions of diplomacy.  You don’t go around assuring other nations that you’ve been practicing to attack a third party.  Besides being operationally stupid, it’s potentially both destabilizing and destructive to your credibility.

Instead, you state what your national interests are, you clarify the outcome you’re looking for, and you assure the relevant audience that you will do what it takes to protect your interests and secure your outcomes.  The point is not whether the audience knows that you have actually tested a military OPLAN (who cares? We test them regularly), the point is for them to understand exactly what you want and the seriousness of your determination.

A warning (or, in this case, an assurance) that the US is ready to attack Iran was almost certainly given on orders from the White House, since it’s not something a diplomat would naturally be moved to say, or say without permission.  It’s a combination of operational TMI and inflammatory rhetoric: a sort of anti-diplomacy.

Second, this is a threat that can’t be convincingly conveyed in a fey, indirect manner.  If we mean this threat and we want it to affect Iran’s decisions, then say it to Iran.  (I would advise putting it in different terms.)  Putting the threat out there in the guise of an assurance to Israel just looks manipulative.

It also looks spurious and irresponsible, if we’re going to sit down with the Iranians in Baghdad later this month and “negotiate.”  What, exactly, are the Iranians supposed to assume about this threat?  What action of theirs could trigger it?  Does it clarify the US position, or obfuscate it?  With the threat of war, it is not actually a good idea to be overly clever and create doubt about triggers and your intentions. If you’re going to deploy the war card, certainty is the mindset you want your intended audience to have.

In any case, if the US and the Western powers make the offer of a sweet deal for Iran, in the hope of getting some kind of agreement – a prospect endorsed by the analysis of long-time observer Gerald Seib in this video – that signal will be at odds with the over-explicit threat of attack.  It would be hard to be convincing about a coherent position in that case.

Regarding the point on military preparations, I know many readers try to stay abreast of where the aircraft carriers are, and that’s not necessarily a fool’s errand.  It’s important not to go all “Pat Buchanan” about it – there are two carriers in the Persian Gulf region at least twice a year because they are turning over their patrol duties; it’s not a sign of the Apocalypse – but it can be a useful indicator.  That said, I advise you not to try this at home if you aren’t familiar with US Navy operations.  The presence of two or more carriers in the Central Command “AOR” (area of responsibility) is almost always an indicator of strike group turnover – or simply a coincidence due to a rare circumstance like USS Abraham Lincoln’s (CVN-72) recent change of homeport from Everett, Washington to Norfolk, Virginia, which involved an extra transit through (and deployment in) the Middle East.

The US administration announced earlier this year that it would be keeping two carriers on station in the Gulf region for the time being.  That gives the president a ready option in case he wants to ramp up pressure on Iran.  I would not obsess over the carriers, however.  They will undoubtedly participate if there is a strike on Iran – they will be indispensable for keeping the Strait of Hormuz open, and their F/A-18 strike-fighters will no doubt be used for the precision targeting of hardened sites, among other tasks for the airwings – but they may well not be the centerpiece of the operation.

If President Obama were to scope a strike on Iran as I believe he would – narrowly, striking only a limited set of nuclear-related targets – the strike may well be conducted as a “prompt global strike,” according to the doctrine and capability of the same name, which has been in development since the last year of the Bush administration.  It could involve mostly cruise missiles and “global airpower”:  B-2 and B-52 bombers launching their missions at a distance from Iran, including launches from US territory; i.e., Whiteman and Barksdale.  (I doubt that it would involve long-range ballistic missiles, which are not accurate enough for most applications in this kind of strike.)  The strike would certainly be conventional, not nuclear.

All that said, if an agreement is reached with Iran in the next couple of months, it will be because the agreement is advantageous to Iran, delaying the EU sanctions which are to kick in this summer, and requiring nothing of Iran that the mullahs were not willing to concede.  Any agreement that does not entail full, unannounced inspection of all Iran’s suspect facilities and nuclear-related programs, as well as Iran’s adherence to the “Additional Protocol” of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, is an agreement that will not stop the nuclear weapons program.  That kind of agreement, however, is what we are virtually guaranteed to get.

For the United States, issuing attack threats in the manner of Hugo Chavez is not a convincing posture.  I don’t know if the Israelis will find it reassuring; I suspect the Europeans and Iranians will find it annoying, and decide to ignore it.

J.E. Dyer’s articles have appeared at The Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions,” Patheos, The Weekly Standard online, and her own blog, The Optimistic Conservative.

Chen, who is blind, was transported to the US embassy on 22 April by well-wishers in China, barely escaping pursuit by authorities.  To secure his departure from the embassy compound, the US agreed to a deal with China by which Chen and his family, who have been tortured and subjected to a brutal form of house arrest for seven years, would be allowed to live, undetained, near a university where Chen could pursue academic studies.  No information has been released as to how the features of that deal would be verified.

Chen reportedly made the decision to leave the embassy when he was told by American personnel that his wife would be beaten by authorities if he did not give himself up.  Chen is in a Chinese hospital, in an extremely vulnerable position, and has been making appeals through the foreign media for help for him and his family.  He has now officially requested asylum of the United States.

Embassies do not make a practice of publicly spiriting asylum-seekers out of host nations, although the embassies of a number of nations, including the US, have quietly assisted over the years in getting asylum-seekers to safety.  During the Cold War, there were official procedures for handling the issue in US embassies and consulates.  Nevertheless, in a publicized case inside the country the dissident seeks to leave, the embassy will not, during normal peacetime relations, take him out of the country by force majeure.

What the embassy can do, however, is offer refuge to the dissident.  The grounds of the US embassy, anywhere in the world, are sovereign US territory.  And what the United States can do is put pressure not on the dissident, but on the dictatorial communist government, to allow Chen and his family to be reunited, and to travel abroad if that’s what they want to do.  Such pressure is more effective when the US has the dissident in safety, and is clearly going to withstand any pressure to give him back to a government that has been torturing and imprisoning him for his beliefs.

The US can put a spotlight on the dissident’s plight, and ensure that the world is watching anything the communist authorities do to his family.  More than that, the president can make it a personal priority to see the dissident released into a safe situation – abroad, if necessary or desired – and a promising future.

How do we know a president and his embassies can do this?  Because it’s what was done by two presidents – Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan – for two Russian Pentecostal Christian families in the former Soviet Union. 

On 27 July, 1978, two Pentecostal families from Chernogorsk, in Siberia, burst into the US embassy in Moscow, seeking American help to leave the country.  They had been attempting to emigrate from the USSR for as much as 20 years (in the case of one of their number), which had resulted only in more assiduous oppression by the Soviet authorities.

Of President Carter, we may say that he did at least the minimum by allowing the Pentecostals to remain in the embassy (where they eventually lived for five years).  There is an interesting echo of the accounts of embassy pressure on Chen in this exchange in October 1978 between Carter and the press (view it here in the papers of the Carter administration):

Q.  Mr. President, a family of Russian Pentecostals, the Vaschenkos, are seeking asylum and are lodged in the U.S. Embassy in Moscow.  They said in letters that have been smuggled out that the embassy is bringing subtle, emotional pressure to expel them into the hands of the Russians, probably at great risk.  Did you direct the embassy to seek their ouster, or are you willing to give them asylum and visas?

The President.  They are Russian citizens, as you know, and have been in the embassy in the Soviet Union, in Moscow, the American Embassy, for months.  We have provided them a place to stay.  We provided them a room to live in, even though this is not a residence with normal quarters for them.  I would presume that they have no reason to smuggle out correspondence to this country since they have the embassy officials’ ability to transmit messages.  I have not directed the embassy to discharge them from the embassy, no.

Reagan had a more proactive approach, one remembered and affirmed by others in later years.  His concern for those suffering persecution in the communist world was genuine and passionate.  Kiron Skinner wrote about Reagan’s intervention with Soviet authorities – including direct appeals to Leonid Brezhnev and Yuri Andropov – in his 2007 book Turning Points in Ending the Cold War.  (See excerpts from pp. 103-4 here.)  According to Skinner:

By the summer of 1983, at the height of the Cold War chill, Reagan and Andropov had privately worked out the details of the Pentecostals’ release from the U.S. Embassy in Moscow and the families were allowed to leave the country.  As Secretary [of State George] Schultz writes in his memoir, “This was the first successful negotiation with the Soviets in the Reagan administration.”  Schultz further notes, “Reagan’s own role in it had been crucial.”

Skinner recounts further the release of well-known dissident Natan Sharansky in 1986 (then known, before his emigration to Israel, as Anatoly Scharansky), as well as Reagan’s advocacy for the Pentecostals and the army of intellectual dissidents in the Soviet Union on his radio program in the 1970s.

Jimmy Carter may have sounded grudging about his government’s support to the Pentecostals, but he was president in a time when Americans did not doubt that communist governments were brutally oppressive, and that helping their embattled citizens, however diplomatically discordant it might be, was simply the right thing to do.  We were prepared at different levels of government to deal with the possibility, because we knew what state collectivism was, and we knew that people would seek help to get away from it.

The preparedness was not universal, of course.  A Soviet sailor who leaped from his freighter – twice – as it sat pierside in a Louisiana port in 1985, hoped to obtain asylum in the US, but was turned back over to his Soviet superiors by two US Border Patrol agents.  (The freighter was loading grain, which the US was selling the USSR to relieve the suffering of the Soviet people, incident to their 67th annual crop failure since the 1917 revolution.)  The State Department became involved only after the sailor had been handed back over to the ship’s master, and although the interpreter who conveyed his wishes to the Border Patrol agents had been clear that Miroslav Medvid was seeking asylum, Time described what followed in this manner:

When the State Department belatedly learned of the incident 13 hours afterward, it persuaded Soviet officials to let Medvid be interviewed. He was examined and questioned by State Department representatives as well as by the Navy doctor and Air Force psychiatrist, both of whom concluded that he was not under the influence of drugs and was competent to decide what he wanted to do. While his ship’s skipper, its doctor and two Soviet diplomats watched, Medvid insisted that he had merely fallen overboard and had no intention of deserting.

The psychiatrist, however, said the evidence showed that Medvid had jumped “purposefully from his ship” and that when he was returned to it, he “probably felt very afraid of the consequences and very much trapped in a corner.” The Soviets apparently threatened to retaliate against the sailor’s family at home, and he became “rather guilty at having jeopardized their safety,” the psychiatrist theorized. The State Department ruled that he could not be held against his expressed wishes and let him return to the Konev.

There are parallels with the Chen situation in just about every previous instance of refuge-seeking by the oppressed from communist nations.  Of all the arms of the US government that ought still to be attuned to the likelihood of these cases, the US embassy in Beijing would seem to be at the top of the list.  The key difference today appears to be the basic posture of the US government.  As regards China specifically, we should not pin that exclusively on the Obama administration.  There has very much been an attitude for the last 20 years that, with the Cold War over, it is outdated to see China through the human-rights lens of the Cold War.

When China proves clearly just how apposite that Cold War lens still is, it may be that a US administration is caught flat-footed.  The “tactical” particulars of the situation – Chen’s unexpected arrival at the embassy, the publicity, and his family’s peril in the hands of the Chinese authorities – meant that the embassy could not easily pursue a quiet plan to help his whole family leave the country.

But that is the sort of tactically inconvenient situation that is likely to arise with people in great trouble.  If we don’t see China, from a strategic perspective, as a source of such situations, we won’t be operationally prepared for them.

Once they do happen, a US administration has discretion over how it responds, and on that head, the Obama administration deserves criticism.  The whole world knows the peril Chen and his family are in.  The right approach here is not to seek a “solution” that gets the governments of China and the US off the hook; it’s to stand by Chen and demand that he be treated with the respect for his rights understood in the Helsinki Accords.  While China is not a signatory to the Accords, their standard for freedom, travel and emigration, and reunification of families is the touchstone to be invoked in this instance.

If we do not believe that, enough to stand up for it when it is inconvenient to our other diplomatic plans, then there was little point in winning the Cold War.  Indeed, if our fear of angering China is greater than our commitment to the freedoms Chen Guangcheng is relying on us to defend, then we didn’t win the Cold War after all.

J.E. Dyer’s articles have appeared at The Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions,” Patheos, The Weekly Standard online, and her own blog, The Optimistic Conservative.

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Defining “atrocity” will be a stiff challenge.  If something seems awful but the US administration doesn’t really want to intervene in it, will it be defined as an “atrocity”?  If it’s defined as an atrocity but we don’t do anything other than blather about it, what exactly will be the point of the Atrocities Prevention policy?

Presumably, a due-out from the Atrocities Prevention Board (APB) will be a periodically updated list of which foreign activities and ongoing events the United States considers to be atrocities.  The absence of any such communication will render the APB so pointless as to be a daily unfolding satire.  Silence from an Atrocities Prevention Board is inherently untenable.

Yet assembling that list will be a heavily politicized process.  Will we call “atrocities” things we have no power to intervene in?  If the American people are reluctant to take on an “atrocity” intervention, is there any political value for the president in having the atrocity officially identified?  A divided Congress may have been inert in the last 18 months, but when overly provoked, as with the endless, punch-pulling Vietnam intervention, Congress becomes a snorting, stamping elephant.   How would a president acting on the proposals of an Atrocities Prevention Board deal with Congress?

If atrocities are defined and declared on a regular basis, yet remain undeterred, the atrocity list will lose its impact in the same way the Homeland Security terror-alert system has.  “Yeah, we’ve got some atrocities going on out there,” the average citizen might say.  “I don’t know what they are, but there’s some kind of board for that.”

Institutionalizing indifference to mass murder – to use The Weekly Standard’s formulation – is one of the obvious hazards of boardifying the US posture on “atrocity.”  There are a couple of others worth mentioning.  One is contingent:  the APB’s leadership under Obama.  The president has appointed Samantha Power– the brain behind the “responsibility to protect” non-hostile kinetic military action in Libya – to head the APB, and she is on record as calling Israel a “major human rights abuser.”  Here is her 2002 proposal for intervening in the Israeli-Palestinian Arab conflict:

What we don’t need is some kind of early warning mechanism there, what we need is a willingness to put something on the line in helping the situation. Putting something on the line might mean alienating a domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial import; it may more crucially (sic) mean sacrificing—or investing, I think, more than sacrificing—billions of dollars, not in servicing Israel’s military, but actually investing in the new state of Palestine, in investing the billions of dollars it would probably take, also, to support what will have to be a mammoth protection force, not of the old Rwanda kind, but a meaningful military presence. Because it seems to me at this stage (and this is true of actual genocides as well, and not just major human rights abuses, which were seen there), you have to go in as if you’re serious, you have to put something on the line.

Getting a US military intervention force in Israel past Congress would be interesting.  The American politics of this are a head-scratcher, but so is the definition in this case.  If Power were to be specific about what she considers “human rights abuses,” one can only presume she would be speaking of checkpoints, the security fence between Israel and Gaza (the security wall with the West Bank had not been constructed in 2002), and Israel’s military attacks on terrorist strongholds in Gaza.

One question this raises is what the APB would call the terrorist attacks by Hamas.  Presumably a single terrorist incident is not a “mass atrocity” – if the Holocaust is taken as the standard – but how about systematic terrorism of the same kind, and against the same people, over decades?  Terrorist organizations do commit mass atrocities, as they have in Colombia and Russia, among other places.  Are terrorists to be intervened with like national governments?  How about syndicate crime, like the cartel thugs who have slaughtered more than 50,000 Mexicans in the last five years?

Meanwhile, are India and Pakistan abusing each other’s populations with their border barriers in Kashmir?  Perhaps even more informative, is the UN committing a human rights abuse by sponsoring (and managing) the security barrier between the Republic of Cyprus and the unrecognized Turkish-occupied portion of the island?

Is the existence of border-security measures a justification for armed intervention?  And if it is, how does it fit into the “mass atrocity” construct?  If it doesn’t justify armed intervention, on the other hand, but something else – what is that something?

UN security wall in Cyprus: Human rights abuse? (WIkimedia Commons photo)

Beyond these problematic points is a more fundamental one, which is the question of what international boundaries mean and how we will decide to use the elements of US power, including force, across them.  Before we jump to any conclusions on this, we need to remember something very basic.  The Holocaust was ended only when we regime-changed Hitler with armed force.  Nothing short of invading Germany and eliminating Hitler – pursuing what was for years afterward called “absolute victory” – had the power to stop any facet of Hitler’s program.  The same was true of imperialist Japan, which committed what we may well call mass atrocities in Manchuria and Southeast Asia during the occupation period there.

The only mass atrocities that have ever been stopped by outside agency – eventually – were stopped by regime-changing the perpetrators.  Suasion, shaming, contumely from the world community, and even sanctions of various kinds have been tried against the perpetrators of other mass atrocities, and nothing but the credible threat or actual use of force has ever produced even a hiatus.  There is no basis on which to hope that it may be possible to “prevent atrocities” by specific, tailored means, as if the atrocities can be separated from the objects of other elements of US policy.

We may perhaps, for example, foster economic and social conditions that have the effect of deterring atrocities.  But except in the case of the longest-running regional or ethnic feuds, we may not even be aware in advance that that’s what we’re doing.  We may simply be pursuing policies that we think are of assistance to other peoples, and will thereby promote US security and interests.  Specifically planning to “prevent atrocities” by these means raises a host of questions about both our prophetic abilities and – frankly – our good sense.

We may also decide that a demonstrable perpetrator of atrocities, like Saddam Hussein, has to be regime-changed, for reasons relating to US security policy.  That will effectively halt his career of atrocities – unlike, for example, our posture on North Korea, where the Kim regime has been starving and torturing its people for decades, as part of a 59-year-old armistice over which our forces stand guard.  The US spent the entire period of the Soviet Union’s existence declining to intervene directly in most of the numerous mass atrocities perpetrated by Soviet Communists and their proxies abroad, while ritually decrying them, imposing very limited sanctions because of them, and performing other ineffective actions.  Estimates of the lives lost to Communist civil wars and takeovers – entirely apart from World War II – range from 100 to 150 million.

The effective powers of government have their limits.  Force is a blunt tool which cannot be used effectively in the calibrated manner suggested by Power’s proposal for Israel and the Palestinians.  To be effective, force must have a concrete, achievable objective that is suited to what force can do: destroy means and vanquish will.  This works for regime-change, an objective with at least a potentially self-sustaining end-state.  It does not work for “atrocity prevention,” which cannot be self-sustaining because it does not posit vanquishing the will of the perpetrator.

Ending atrocities is possible, meanwhile, precisely because there are multiple armed nation-states, and some are constituted to act with both compunction and purpose.  A prophylactic, globalist approach to mass atrocities is another matter.  If we sold out the concept of national sovereignty – including the integrity of borders – for the postulated benefit of preventing atrocities, we would find that against a supranational body chartered with “prevention,” there would be no recourse.  Whatever atrocities it permitted would be unredressable.

Territorial nationalism is what allows us to guarantee liberty and civil rights for ourselves, and to intervene abroad on the terms we consider appropriate.  Global-political universalism is the enemy of liberty and national political discretion, as demonstrated most recently by the globalist Communist empire, but in earlier centuries by the Roman Empire.

Ultimately, even in a narrow sense, “atrocity prevention” as a core mission of the US national security apparatus is a recipe for endless, end-state-less – and regional-pattern-distorting – involvement abroad.  It fits no traditional construct for the US decision to use national power.  It inherently posits a kind of “force decision-making” different from what exists today with the structure of the US government and our arrangements with our allies.

Yet all of that may be moot, if the APB is little more than window-dressing.  And if that is the case, US credibility will take another major hit.

J.E. Dyer’s articles have appeared at The Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions,” Patheos, The Weekly Standard online, and her own blog, The Optimistic Conservative.

Clearly divided global leaders

The confrontations in the UN have been emblematic of the Asian-Atlantic divide over Syria, but perhaps not as much as a less-publicized sequence of events.  In the hours after Russia and China vetoed the Western-sponsored UN resolution in February, Nicolas Sarkozy proposed the “Friends of Syria” vehicle for coordinating international action.  The US and Turkey quickly joined forces on the Friends of Syria effort, and a first meeting was scheduled for 24 February in Tunisia.

Russia and China both declined to participate.  And their non-participation has taken the form of competing efforts to put a plan together to resolve the Syrian crisis.  On 10 March, at a meeting in Cairo – shortly before this week’s UN confrontation with the US – Russia and the Arab League announced a set of agreed principles for ending the conflict.  One of those principles is that both sides – the Assad regime and the insurgents – must lay down their arms.  Russia will not buy into any proposal that has Assad’s forces observing a unilateral ceasefire.

The Arab League’s agreement on Russia’s “five principles” is a milestone in the effort to get some kind of coalescence around a way ahead.  Arab League agreement is not universal; it won’t surprise Middle East-watchers that Qatar – home of Muslim Brotherhood leader Yusuf al-Qaradawi and recent host of the anti-Israel “Jerusalem conference” – called last week for a military solution in Syria, with Arab troops in the lead.  But the Arab League agreement with Russia tends to highlight Qatar as an outlier in that regard.

It appears that Qatar is hoping to urge the West to intervene in Syria, in combination with military forces from Arab partners; i.e., replicate the action in Libya last year.  From a Muslim Brotherhood standpoint, wresting Libya from Qadhafi opened the country up to shariazation.  But the Arab League as a whole is publicly agreeing with Russia rather than backing Qatar’s play.  (And this in spite of Arab League participation in the Friends of Syria meeting in Tunisia.)

China chimed in a few hours ago with supportive comments about the Russia-Arab League agreement.  (Beijing has also gone Russia one better with a six-point plan.)  The Chinese had an envoy in Syria last week talking to both the Assad government and the insurgents in an effort to broker a ceasefire, and they are dispatching diplomats around the region to “explain China’s position” and affirm the need for a political solution.

Meanwhile, Turkey plans to host the second Friends of Syria meeting on 2 April.  (The dilatory schedule mimics the US/EU approach to Libya in 2011.)  Nothing much came out of the first one, and the second meeting is already haunted by the report – denied by Turkish authorities – that Sarkozy had not been invited to it because of the recent French resolution condemning the World War I-era slaughter of Armenians as a genocide.

The lack of momentum for Western-brokered proposals is a serious problem.  While it would be too much to say that the Russia-Arab League agreement has momentum at this point, it would also be too much to say that anything put forward by the West is a credible challenge to it.  The Arab League doesn’t have the unity to deal with Syria by itself, and has been looking for a strong horse to run with.  There is no guarantee at this point that the strong horse will be the US and EU.

Turkish press opined this weekend that the reelection of Vladimir Putin would induce a notable warming trend in Russian-Turkish relations.  Putin is a personal friend of President Gul and Prime Minister Erdogan; this prediction is solid, although of course it will not eliminate all of the natural sources of friction between the two nations.  What it may well do, however, is change the dynamic in which Turkey has found it convenient to throw in with the US on the Syria problem.

If the US is not going to back decisive action in Syria, Turkey may quietly migrate to an accord with Russia on ending the conflict.  (If Ankara can present this as Russia migrating toward Turkey, so much the better for Erdogan.  But Moscow has the agreement in hand with the Arab League.)  What we may count on with both Turkey and Russia is a desire to wield the primary influence over the process of establishing a new government in Syria.  With the current US administration, the utility of the United States as a patron for this Turkish purpose may not be as great as that of Russia.

Syrian situation on the ground

Is the strategic situation changing inside Syria?  There are developments that suggest it is.  The Assad regime is mounting an assault today on the northern enclave in rebel hands.  Unconfirmed reports suggest that regime forces have recaptured Idlib, a key city held by the Free Syrian Army.

Significantly, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has also reported that the Syrian government is laying mines on the borders with Turkey and Lebanon, a measure designed to keep foreign forces out and curtail the rebels’ cross-border cooperation.  There is no reporting about the border with Iraq, but Iraq is the land route between Syria and Iran, which Assad will probably not want to imperil.  The borders with Turkey and Lebanon are the likely infiltration routes for foreign special forces and support to the Syrian rebels.

Yesterday, moreover, Russia dispatched two planeloads of humanitarian assistance to Syria.  Raise your hand if you think the two IL-76 cargo aircraft contained only “humanitarian” goods.  (OK, you with the hands up, go demine the Syrian border.)

The hour is late.  The fact that the US and EU have no momentum doesn’t mean no one has; with each passing day, it is more likely to mean the opposite.  If Assad is able to regain control of his territory, there will be no acceptable – no unifying – pretext for intervention.  The battle for this objective appears to have already started.  As between the dithering of the West and the cynical pragmatism of Russia and China, the latter seems to be looking pretty good to the Arab League.

The road not taken

What should the US have done by now?  Adopted a determined objective of our own – in my view, it could only have been removing Assad, preventing a takeover by Islamists, and brokering the establishment of a consensual, multi-party government – and pursued the objective pragmatically but in a principled manner.  It is very possible the objective could have been achieved without military action.

Regarding the pragmatism: Russia has a stake in Syria.  It doesn’t matter whether we think she should or not; she does.  Get over it; stop haranguing Russia pointlessly in public forums, and concentrate on herding Russia toward our objective.  If Syria is not taken over by Islamists, Russia wins.  So do we.  That should unite us in riding herd on the plans of the Erdogan government, as well as Iran’s and the Muslim Brotherhood’s.

In any case, Russia has always been the key to removing Assad without the need for military intervention, and in late January and February, Russia was even obliquely communicating a willingness to trade Assad for a new model.  The character of Syrian territory as a strategic factor for Russia – whether it is hostile or friendly – is of more importance to Moscow than Bashar al-Assad is.

A solution in which the Syrian people were empowered to operate more freely in a true multiparty government, under the aegis of multinational protection against both Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood, would be the most desirable, achievable outcome.  It is not possible to broker this outcome while ignoring Russia, but it would be possible to broker it by including Russia.  There are enough competing interests, between the US, the Arab world, the EU, Russia, and Turkey, to leverage everyone into a favorable compromise.  The overriding principle should be that the Syrian people be relieved of Assad but not fall prey to Islamists – and that is a principle that the governments of most of the Arab League, as well as Europe and Russia, could unite around.

A key principle of the Reagan administration, that negotiating with the old Soviet Union on human rights was integral to global security, should underlie the US approach to Syria.  We need not hand Moscow a third-party revolution in Syria; we would do better to warn Russia that that’s what she’ll get if she doesn’t work with us – and then focus on the political conditions in Syria.  If we are watching over their liberalization, Russia may even retain a special relationship with Syria, but the guarantee of a more liberal political atmosphere will do what it always does: empower the liberalizers and foster transparency and truth.  Russia’s relationship with Syria should depend on adapting to that.

But only the US has the power to ensure that condition.  None of this would be easy.  I can think of few things less fun than dealing with Russia and Turkey on Syria.  But a program like this is feasible, or at least it has been, because there are so many competing interests to leverage.  US leadership is what is missing in all this – and it will not look like leadership to anyone else unless it contains an element of enforcement.  (The reason why Russia’s position is starting to look more like leadership to those in the region is precisely that it does.)  Everyone should be worried that if he doesn’t compromise and accept the basic features of the US position, he won’t be in on the solution.

That’s not the situation our leaders in Washington have created, however.  There is and has always been an alternative to either intervening militarily, against the strenuous objections of Russia and China, or leaving Assad to do whatever he’s going to do.  But crafting that alternative would require positive leadership from the United States.  (It would, for example, require changing our intelligence focus from generic – plaintive – questions about whether Assad will survive to what would happen if the US took specific actions.)

We would have to take a position, one beyond simply getting rid of Assad.  We would have to start knocking heads together to line up a coalition for it.  It seems absurd to have to explain that – but then, we did elect Obama in 2008.

J.E. Dyer’s articles have appeared at The Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions,” Patheos, The Weekly Standard online, and her own blog, The Optimistic Conservative.

We’ll get to the Iranian warships.  The drones – according to Pentagon officials, a “good number” of them – are reportedly being used to collect information on Bashar al-Assad’s crackdown on his people.  They will provide supporting evidence to justify an international intervention in Syria.  The US officials say the intelligence collection is not a precursor to military operations in Syria.

The US has actually done this before.  During the gruesome internal conflict in Rwanda (back in the Clinton administration), when Hutus were massacring Tutsis, the US dispatched military reconnaissance aircraft to collect intelligence on the fighting.  We have also, of course, operated drones over Somalia and Yemen at various times in the last decade, both to collect intelligence and to target terrorists.  But in Syria, the interested parties include Russia, Iran, China, and a collection of Islamist groups.

The US administration’s interlocutors are not wrong to wonder if sending in the drones is a preparatory measure for sending in troops to intervene: the intelligence collected by tactical drones is more immediate, dynamic, and ephemeral than that gathered by standoff collection assets.  If you want to know what Assad’s overall posture is, you use the standoff assets; if you want to know what his forces are doing on a moment-to-moment basis, you use operational-level (e.g., Predator) or tactical drones.  (If there are a “good number” of drones being used, most of them have to be operational or tactical drones – and are probably Predator operational-level drones, with good range and altitude.)

Meanwhile, as if on cue, the Iranian warships that stopped in Jeddah earlier this month have transited the Suez Canal – without any prior brouhaha in the press – and arrived in Syria.  They are in Syria exactly a year after their last visit, and presumably will offload weapons and/or ammunition from the supply ship Kharg, which is accompanying the Iranian destroyer.  Reporting from a Syrian defector (see last link) indicated that last year’s Iranian naval task force delivered weapons and ammunition to the Assad regime.

The ships’ arrival makes Iran the third foreign government that has been able, without hindrance, to enter a Syrian port and offload whatever it wants, in spite of the sanctions being imposed on the Assad regime.  Hugo Chavez has delivered diesel fuel to Syria since the sanctions were imposed, and Russia, besides sending her carrier task force to Syria during its recent deployment, used a commercial cargo ship to deliver arms to Syria in January.  The sanctions thus look pretty perfunctory (not to mention perforable).

Could a US drone be shot down over Syria?  Yes, the capability is there.  I don’t assess that Assad wants to do anything so provocative, and Russia – the supplier (and very possibly the current operator) of anti-air missiles in Syria – will want to keep things calm as long as possible.  But drones watching Syria will inevitably end up watching Russian forces there, and at a certain point Russia may well find that intolerable.  If a combination of Assad’s and Moscow’s preferences should cause them to want to exclude the drones, the question will really be whether anyone thinks President Obama would retaliate for a drone shoot-down or two.

There are too many variables in this situation to predict narrowly which direction things will go.  The reason for that is largely that the Obama administration’s policy is to avoid securing an outcome with the use of US power.  If the US will not seek a particular outcome, we will be consigned to waiting on others to do so.  There are many players, and numerous potential reactions.  The permutations of hostility and resistance along the way are endless.

What should the US do?  Our first principle should be that Assad must go, but that principle can’t stand on its own. It would not be better to have a new government of Islamist radicals than to have Assad in power.  It matters who takes over, and how.

A key problem, however, is that we have put our chips on Muslim Brotherhood groups and the brokerage of the Erdogan government in Turkey.  That is a very bad policy move, one guaranteed to generate enemies (Russia, China, Iran) for our non-policy policy while giving nations like Saudi Arabia less reason to endorse our activities.  We can’t make the Muslim Brotherhood good for the Middle East by throwing our weight behind it.

Doing so is, in fact, wasting and diluting the power we still have.  If the US policy were to fence in and discourage the Muslim Brotherhood, while bolstering liberalizing elements instead — elements that exist in every nation of the Middle East – we would make it more desirable for a nation like Russia to collaborate with us on the Syria problem.  Russia is the one nation that could directly help us to get rid of Assad; if one of our top objectives were to ensure that the follow-on government was not taken over by Islamists, we and Moscow would have that key objective in common.

The only way to secure a positive outcome in Syria is to use US power, under US strategic direction, to do it.  This has never necessarily meant military intervention, but it does necessarily mean acting with purpose and determination, rather than throwing random reconnaissance assets into the fray while handing the political problem over lock, stock, and barrel to the Arab League and the UN.  Even after the non-intervention intervention in Libya, there is still a level of respect for US power; it would still be possible for America to foster a good outcome in Syria by bringing together the positions of the various parties.

We cannot exclude Turkey, the Arab League, or Russia from Syria, but the US could establish limits on what they can hope to do there.  For the sake of the Syrian people and regional stability, one of the two most important things in ousting Assad is preventing an Islamist takeover.  (The other is fostering a positive character for the follow-on government of Syria.)  Liberalization of the Muslim Middle East faces obstacles under any kind of regime, but radicalization is most likely under Islamism.  There are elements in the Arab League (and in the larger OIC as well) that want an Islamist takeover as little as Russia does; there is common ground to be found if the US is willing to take leadership.

We have not been, however.  The Obama administration has chosen an ideological course of passivity as regards concrete political outcomes, combined with courtship of third-party Islamist groups.  This is an exceptionally bad approach.  Nothing this administration does is a conventional use of US power – and that is why Assad is still mowing down his hapless people while his allies deliver fuel and arms to him without let or hindrance from NATO or the United States.

J.E. Dyer’s articles have appeared at The Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions,” Patheos, The Weekly Standard online, and her own blog, The Optimistic Conservative.

Robert Mackey at New York Times’ The Lede has a Friday post entitled “Crisis in Syria Looks Very Different on Satellite Channels Owned by Russia and Iran.”

Well, no kidding.  It’s nice to see NYT catching up with the rest of the infosphere.  But it’s not just in Russian and Iranian media that the crisis in Syria looks different.  It’s basically everywhere outside the United States.  In the US, the news centers on what the Obama administration is doing about the crisis.  Outside the US, the news is about what the nations of Europe are doing, what the Russians are doing, what the Turks are doing, what the Arab League and the OIC are doing, what alarms the Russians about Western policies (see here for a more explicit, populist-level view), how the region is reacting to the crisis, and which nations – Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Iran, the other Persian Gulf nations, Cyprus, Lebanon, Israel – might be sucked into an armed confrontation between Russia and the West in Syria.

In American news coverage, Russia is seen as the spoiler in the UN, the bad-tempered world power that said no to an Arab-drafted peace plan backed by the US.  In other news coverage, Russia is seen as the principal military patron of Bashar al-Assad, with military advisors all over the country and a serious determination to prevent the West from regime-changing Syria out from under Russian influence.

The situation

According to Le Figaro on Tuesday, Russian military “advisors” are “omnipresent” in Syria. Besides reportedly sending S-300 anti-air missile systems to Damascus and agreeing to deliver a new batch of military aircraft, the Russians this week celebrated the reopening of a Cold War-era intelligence listening post on Mount Qassioun, the summit that dominates Damascus from the northwest.  The Russians appear increasingly dug in.

Russian advisors are also laboring to reorganize the Baath Party and arrange talks with members of the Syrian resistance.  They are making their own contacts with Arab and Islamic organizations, seeking to dilute the solidarity of the West with Arab leaders on the Syrian problem.  In a phone discussion with Nicolas Sarkozy this week, Dmitry Medvedev warned France not to use a coalition of the willing to take unilateral action in Syria.  France – not the United States – was the Perm-5 nation that inaugurated the “friends of the Syrian people” effort immediately after the Russian and Chinese vetoes in the UN on 4 February.  (Tunisia has reportedly agreed to host the first gathering of this coalition.)

On Thursday, Russia’s vice-minister of defense, Anatoly Antonov, was quoted as saying on Russian television that Russian military personnel are deployed in various sites around Syria.  (See here as well.)  This is the first high-level confirmation of such an extensive Russian presence, and it is obviously not a random comment.  The Russians are anxious to have it understood that if a Western-Arab coalition fires on Syria, it will hit Russians.  In Antonov’s words, Russia “cannot remain indifferent.”

Russian preparations

Is Russia preparing to actually do anything militarily?  She seems to be preparing to defend herself against the West and its allies, and indeed, to hold parts of the West (and perhaps Japan) at risk.  On Thursday, the Russians announced that a new Voronezh long-range missile-defense radar will go operational near St. Petersburg this month.   Along with the Voronezh radar operating near the Kaliningrad enclave on the Baltic (since November 2011), the radar in St. Petersburg will provide coverage of much of the western and polar-northern approaches to Russia.  This is one is a series of precautions, which also involve troop movements in the Southern Military District (facing the Black Sea and Caucasus), defensive exercises, and patrols.

One such patrol reportedly occurred in the Far East on Wednesday, when a flight of two Tu-95 Bear bombers, two Su-24 Fencer jets (outfitted for reconnaissance), and one A-50 Mainstay AWACS made a close approach to the airspace of northern Japan.  Russian media reported this foray in detail, along with Japan’s reaction, making sure to point out that the incident marked the first time a Russian AWACS had approached Japanese airspace.  The meaning of the AWACS participation would be twofold: first, that the Russians are ready to coordinate defensive responses to Japanese or US strike-fighters, and second, that they have the capability to coordinate air battles on offense.

Looking toward the near future, the Russians are improving the Severomorsk-1 air base near the Northern Fleet headquarters on the Barents Sea.  The project will allow the base to accommodate the Tu-160 Blackjack, Russia’s long-range supersonic jet bomber, and the Tu-95 turboprop bomber.  The move will put extended support facilities  for the bombers in Russia’s remote northwestern periphery, allowing the aircraft, now based in Engels in the interior, to get to a Western- or Northern- (polar) front fight faster, and with less vulnerability over potentially hostile territory (i.e., in Europe).  The new facilities are to be operational in May 2013; they would not be a factor in a near-term dust-up over Syria, but are another indicator of Moscow’s emerging posture toward the West.

The southern border

The Russians are attending to their vulnerable southern border as well, and here, their calculations are as much about ensuring freedom of action for their own initiatives as for securing their flank.  The geography is dictatorial: the Black Sea is the path to and from Syria (and the larger Mediterranean), and to hold the Black Sea, Russia must be able to secure the Caucasus.  That means preventing Georgia from being turned against Russian purposes by an outside power.  Russia is locally strong in the Caspian Sea, on the east side of the Caucasus; it is in the Black Sea and down the center-line, south through the Caucasus, where she needs strengthen her hand.

Reporting from December and January (see links at my earlier post above) indicated that Russia was moving troops into the Southern Military District.  In late January, the Russian defense minister announced the deployment of additional special forces (Spetsnaz) troops to Stavropol and Kislovodsk, which lie in the Caucasus close to the border with Georgia’s breakaway provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia (see map).

The Caucasus

The additional troops in the Southern Military District are unlikely to be used in Syria.  Their new location is inconvenient for that; it would be easier to airlift them to Syria from better furnished logistics hubs.  But the location is ideal for intervening quickly to take over Georgia, and thereby prevent the US from using Georgian territory, as well as establishing an uninterrupted line of military communication from Russia to Armenia, where the Russians already have a military outpost.  Controlling the territory down to Armenia would put neighboring Azerbaijan – America’s other budding ally in the Caucasus – between Russian-held territory in the west and Russian forces in the Caspian Sea to the east.

This fight would involve “internal lines of communication” for Russia, and her preparations would not necessarily all be visible from outside the region.  Air support, in particular, can be provided without visible pre-staging.

Meanwhile, Russia wants to hold the high card in the Black Sea to the extent possible, and to that end, has just – at the end of January – begun conducting strategic bomber patrols over the Black Sea.

The weather is immobilizing ships in the Black Sea at the moment, so naval manifestations from Russia are not to be expected.  There has been a noteworthy change in the Med, however.  The Admiral Kuznetsov carrier task force exited the Med at the beginning of February, and the Amur-class floating repair ship PM-56, which had been in Tartus, Syria, returned to homeport in the Black Sea on 31 January.  But a Russian naval tanker, the Ivan Bubnov, remained in the Med when the carrier task force left.

Bubnov was north of Morocco heading east on 1 February; the tanker may well spend little time in Syria, because its presence gives the Russian navy a mobile refueling capability that is not dependent on Syria.  Keeping Bubnov in the Med means the Russians intend to bring warships back as necessary, and be able to operate without a geographic tether.  (For the time being, Bubnov can take on additional fuel in most Mediterranean ports.  If tensions increased, the options could include Morocco, Algeria, Montenegro, and possibly Malta or Cyprus.)

Scope of the worst case?

It is inaccurate to underestimate or dismiss Russia.  She is neither inert nor a non-factor in the Syria crisis – and she doesn’t need to be able to “defeat” the US or NATO in a confrontation, she just has to make the cost of a confrontation too high.  I believe Russia is sending every signal she can think of to discourage the West from mounting a military operation.  The Russians don’t want to have to fight.  In Syria, that will mean breaking the already-fragile conventions holding the regional status quo together.

But they are warning in multiple ways that they will fight if they have to.  If that actually happens, the calculation will be that the NATO nations will not choose to bring their superior force to bear, and break a military defense of Syria that is backed and shielded by Russia.  Before counting Russia out, consider these questions.

1.  Can Russia airlift a tailored, small- to medium-size force to Syria?  Yes.

2.  Can Russia overrun Georgia and force concessions on the use of Georgian territory?  Yes.

3.  Can Russia deliver large weapon systems to Syria by ship?  Yes.

4.  Can Russia hold all shipping at risk in the Black Sea?  Yes.

5.  Can Russia shut down NATO’s northern logistic pipeline into Afghanistan?  Yes.

Russia has all these capabilities.  The relevant questions of power and will would be these:

1.  Would NATO actively prevent Russian warships, or cargo ships escorted by warships, from getting to Syria?  NATO could, but the question is whether we would.

2.  Would NATO oppose Russia directly and with force, if she overran Georgia?  We could.  Would we?

3.  Would NATO threaten to shoot down Russian aircraft airlifting troops and equipment to Syria?  We could.  Would we?

4.  If NATO were faced with losing Russian cooperation on the northern logistics route to Afghanistan, would the NATO nations be prepared to accept that as a cost of enforcing a solution on Russia in Syria?

It is not certain how these questions would be answered, and that’s where Russia’s dilemma lies.  I do not by any means assess that Russia is ready to launch a campaign today.  But I do assess that the West has not taken seriously Russia’s fundamental objection to seeing Syria regime-changed by an Arab coalition whose principal outside patron is not Russia.  The problem for Russia is not so much that Assad has to be replaced as that the Western powers propose to do it in conjunction with the Arab League, an arrangement that diminishes Russia’s influence on the process while opening a door for state-Islamist radicals.  If Syria is to be given a new regime through an Arab partnership, Russia wants to be in the lead.

The strategic issue for Russia here is not merely the narrow concern about having a base in the Med.  It is the approach, ever closer to Russia, of a Western-backed “tectonic shift” – Medvedev’s expression for the Arab Spring – that keeps opening political doors to the Muslim Brotherhood.  If common cause is going to be made with the Muslim Brotherhood, Russia will do it, selectively, and for her own purposes.  She will resist having Muslim Brotherhood-led or -influenced regimes inflicted on her near abroad by the West.

Libya was a different story: always an outlier in numerous ways, and in any case having old and geographically obvious ties to the major economic powers of Europe.  It was not a direct blow to Russia for the West to handle Libya in the peculiar, indeterminate manner chosen by France, the UK, and the US.  But Syria is different.  What happens in Syria will affect everything for 2,000 miles around on three continents.  Russia can’t let Syria be handled as Libya has been.  Neither can Turkey, for that matter, which is why the Turks have been eager to take the Syrian resistance under their wing, and keep coming up with new proposals for talks and coalition building.

Failures of US policy

The bottom line, however, is that the US could handle the whole Syria issue differently.  What is missing in this saga is American leadership, on traditional American principles.  The outcome in Syria is not solely about a revolution against a terrible dictator.  It has repercussions for the power relationships and security arrangements of everyone in the region.  If there is no great power seeking to foster a good outcome for the Syrian people, while also balancing the concerns of other interested parties, then there will be no balance:  there will only be a back-and-forth scramble in which the chief victims are the Syrian people.

The back-and-forth scramble is what we are seeing.  It is not strategically sound to simply back one faction in a situation like this, on the narrow basis of ideology, but that is what the Obama administration has done.  Instead of taking leadership, it has backed a plan Russia has good reason to find inimical and dangerous.

The US should be concerned about the danger as well – but instead, the Obama administration is seeking reconciliation with the Muslim Brotherhood, backing it in Syria (see here as well), and proposing to fund and treat with the terrorist group Hamas.  The Russians are justified in being worried that the US shows little discrimination in our choice of clients and protégés in the region.  Whether the reason is ideological sympathy or ideological naïveté, the US administration’s affinity for the most radical, repressive, Islamo-statist elements in the Islamic world cannot be a basis for strategically responsible uses of power.

The Obama administration showed clearly during the Libya operation that it was committed to not using US power to achieve decisive political outcomes.  Yet US power is the element most badly needed in the situation in Syria.  The feat needed in Syria is one to which only America, up to now, has been suited: acknowledging the regional implications of any Syrian outcome; bringing Russia into a group effort; and yet also bringing an end to the Assad regime on terms favorable for the Syrian people, and acceptable to the Arab world, the West, and Russia.

Perhaps, in the weeks ahead, another nation will find a way to fill that role.  France may shift her focus: from dismissing Russia and setting up a separate coalition, to trying to engage Russia.  Turkey may be able to broker a group effort in which Russia gets a role.

Russian intransigence is marginally more likely to win out; I don’t think France and the UK are really stupid enough to provoke an armed standoff with Russia, even if the US is.  But we are in uncharted territory, and that assessment may be wrong.

It’s not as great as Obama and his supporters have suggested, for the world to be free of US power, exercised with purpose and clarity.

J.E. Dyer’s articles have appeared at The Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions,” Patheos, The Weekly Standard online, and her own blog, The Optimistic Conservative.

The US and EU backed an Arab League plan to transition Syria from the Assad regime to a new, popularly elected government.  The plan was proposed for UN endorsement, so that its execution would have the imprimatur of the UN and the implied weight of international approval.  The Obama administration made execution of this plan, through the UN, the focus of US policy on Syria, as did the EU and its major member states.

They brought the question to a vote in spite of the fact that the positions of Russia and China on intervening in Syria have been unchanged for months.  It was predictable that Russia and China would veto the resolution.  Indeed, it was a grave tactical error to force the confrontation.  Russia’s and China’s greatest concerns have not changed, and instead of addressing them, the Atlantic members of the Perm-5 forced a vote.

This was a confrontation that did not have to happen.  Russia’s and China’s concerns have sound elements.  Consider the issue in this light: do we really want to set a precedent in which the UN gives its stamp of approval to regime-change proposals from the Arab League?  Should the UN act as a fulcrum for regime change in this manner?  If we allow it to, what will that mean for the future?  For whom else will the UN endorse third-party plans for regime change?

The precedent in principle is one of the great problems here, and Russian and Chinese comments on the issue have consistently centered on it.  Remember that the UN did not give its stamp of approval to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, which had as its objective regime-changing Saddam Hussein.  I never considered that a problem, and indeed was glad that a faulty precedent was not set then.

In 2011, the UN declined to endorse any regime-change proposal for Libya.  In approving the use of force against the Qadhafi regime, the UN’s narrow justification was protection of civilians.  That principle was strategically and operationally unsound, to be sure, but by invoking it, the US delegation and the UN avoided pushing for the bad precedent we have just demanded a vote on: having the UN endorse third-party proposals for regime change.

Frankly, Russia and China have good grounds for rejecting that proposal.  It is not safe, for any nation, for the UN to be a source of such endorsements.  The character of the UN is well known; it cannot be trusted with such a portfolio.  Neither the United States nor any nation in Europe is naturally immune to attack by this method – but the Obama administration and the EU continue to behave as if we are.

Besides the flawed principle, Russia is of course concerned about her client, Bashar al-Assad, being removed by outside agency.  But her greater concern is who the remover would be.  Russia cannot tolerate giving a Western-backed Arab League the lead in picking a new leadership for Syria – any more than Russia thought it was a good idea for Turkey’s Erdogan to pick Syria’s new leadership.  The reason is a combination of factors:  Moscow fears political-power wins for the Islamic world in the context of a fading, incoherent American power – and the peril is doubled by the fact that it’s the West actively bolstering the Arab-Muslim bloc as a regional power broker.

From the Russian perspective, this Western move is either diabolical – a means of raiding Russia’s client base without confronting Moscow directly – or colossally stupid.  China, under perceived pressure from American activism in Southeast Asia and the South Pacific, also sees the move as opening doors that should be held closed: doors that will usher in new stability problems on China’s western flank.

We should be clear that Russia and China are both happy to have their own special relationships with the Arab League, and with Arab or other Muslim Middle Eastern nations individually.  They understand this as pragmatism, and have no illusions about what it means in terms of amity, goodwill, or commonality of philosophical interests.  The problem, from their perspective, is the West giving a boost on principle to a bloc that is hostile, unreliable, and potentially very exploitable by newly-empowered radical Islamists, as the “Arab Spring” spins off its thunderstorms and tornadoes.  Either the Westerners are ideological dupes, or they are playing a very deep power game.  With their passive-aggressive approach, the US and EU have chosen the path most likely to shift power relationships in negative, uncontrollable directions for everyone in Asia and much of Europe and Africa.

By operating on a set of unrealistic ideological precepts, the Obama administration has made it impossible for Russia and China to tacitly accept US leadership and extract from it the benefits they can.  The vetoes they exercised in Saturday’s vote have launched a new period in which they will make fewer and fewer bones about repudiating US leadership and pushing for alternative arrangements.

 As for Syria, France has already announced that she is pushing, in the absence of a UN resolution, for a coalition approach (emphasis added):

President Nicolas Sarkozy said France would work with its European and Arab partners to create what he called a “group of friends of the Syrian people” to apply international backing to the Arab League’s call for President Bashar al-Assad to step aside, the withdrawal of troops and a transition to democracy.

Apparently, Sarkozy is willing to dispense with American “leadership from behind,” and find a solution for Syria without the United States.  France’s approach is commonsensical and realistic, and that could be a net positive for Syria and the region.  But Russia and China have their own diplomatic channels and proposals in Syria; it is not a given that France’s initiative is the one that will carry the day.  In any case, the outcome could very well be worked out without any real input from US power.

Don’t be too quick to say, “Good riddance; France or Russia should be handling it anyway.”  If our power is so valueless that it can be dispensed with in the Eastern hemisphere, there is nothing that will prevent that region’s security problems from rapidly becoming ours.

J.E. Dyer’s articles have appeared at The Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions,” Patheos, The Weekly Standard online, and her own blog, The Optimistic Conservative.

If you get your news from the mainstream media, you probably think that China – in spite of repeatedly opposing the Western sanctions on Iran – has effectively joined the sanctions effort by cutting oil orders with the Iranians.

In the context of Beijing’s deep involvement in the Iranian oil and gas industry, however, this media narrative is not just invalid, it’s wildly, grotesquely invalid.  China is investing heavily not just in oil and gas, but in other industries in Iran, including arms manufacturing and railway development.  The investment in the oil and gas industry is robust by itself, however.  It is also geographically interesting, and financially interesting.

All aboard for evading the sanctions

The point to begin with is that China is continuing at this moment to buy large quantities of oil from Iran and have it shipped to China.  An equally salient point is that the explanation for the cut in orders in the first month of 2012 was provided by the Wall Street Journal on 6 January:   China and Iran have been negotiating a pricing dispute.  In dealing with the state oil and gas companies of China and Russia, clients and partners run into this problem all the time.  Russia has become particularly famous for stalling on purchases and deliveries during negotiations, but China does it too.  If you want to understand how prices and deliveries will be negotiated in a world ruled by the oligarchs of the Asian powers, watch how they deal today with their global partners in the oil and gas industry.

But it’s not just that China is not on board with the sanctions against Iran.  Russia, China, and India are all continuing to trade with Iran in various lines of commerce, including oil and gas, and are settling their accounts in currencies other than the US dollar (see here as well).  They are simply avoiding the mechanisms – e.g., correspondent banks – through which the US and the EU are levying sanctions.  Japan and South Korea, other major crude oil customers, have been noncommittal on sanctions; industry analysts predict they will make symbolic cuts in their orders from Iran, on the order of 10-15%, but will not cease buying entirely.

This is much bigger than the usual evasion shenanigans that come with economic sanctions.   Frankly, Western political leaders are deceiving themselves if they believe Iran’s oil industry can be set on its heels with sanctions so porous.  It is entirely possible that Iran will not have to sell any less crude than she has to offer.  Instead of going to the EU, the oil would simply go to Asian nations.

The disadvantage for Iran in this arrangement is that negotiating non-dollar purchases with Russia and China will be a freighted political activity, as opposed to a simple marketplace transaction.  This is an important, game-changing disadvantage.  The “customer” will hold the upper hand in Iran’s economic-survival transactions.  However Iran deals with that, it will change Asia for the foreseeable future, and begin to affect conditions at Asia’s juncture with Europe and Africa sooner than we imagine.  The political consequences of that shift in power relationships will be uniformly disadvantageous to the US and our allies.

Meanwhile, however, Iranian natural gas continues to flow.  Turkey, like China, is taking advantage of Iran’s precarious position to negotiate a price reduction on Iranian gas.  But Pakistan is moving ahead with Iran on a gas pipeline project that is intended to eventually transport gas to India as well.  And although the EU has sworn off Iranian crude, BP reportedly believes that natural gas from a Caspian Sea field in which Iran has a 10% interest will be exempt from the sanctions.  Iran’s gas exports will continue to be a source of hard currency – whatever hard currency now means.

The pivot-point of change

The quiescent global regime of hard currency and the effective national independence it bolsters – for anyone who can generate robust, honest trade – are already in the process of breaking down.  Trying to isolate Iran from that regime is undermining the regime itself, because Russia, China, and India are all willing to operate outside of it in dealing with Iran.  This is a reflection not only of their resistance to the US policy on Iran, but of their assessment of the West’s prospects for stability.  The perception of safety in the US dollar and the US security regime is no longer the governing “cost” factor.  The Asian giants are willing to accept the cost of what is essentially a system of politics-based barter, because their higher priority is doing things their way from a geopolitical standpoint.

At some point, other nations will probably face a choice between making tacit agreements with the Asian giants, or sticking by the heroic gestures of Washington and Brussels – whose own monetary soundness is daily less unassailable.  A quick resolution of the Iran problem would avert that choice, but such a resolution is all but impossible, even if miracles can never be assumed away entirely.  The sanctions on Iran will either be lifted without achieving their goal, or – one way or another – they will fundamentally transform the geopolitical environment of Asia.  The latter is more likely at this point.

China’s move to occupy a central position

Russia has a significant advantage in doing business with Iran:  their shared sea-link through the Caspian Sea.  But China has been laboring to arrange for advantages of her own, and, through the oil industry, has managed to establish herself – in something of a Napoleonic move – in a central position on one of the most important borders in the region:  the southern border between Iran and Iraq.

On 22 January, Michael Ledeen highlighted a little-noticed report on an agreement recently concluded between Beijing and Tehran, which will allow China to develop oilfields in western Iran.  Besides outlining the areas where the Chinese will set up infrastructure, the report claims that the agreement provides for China to give military protection to the oilfields.  This may or may not mean that the Chinese presence will include such weapon systems as anti-air missiles, but it undoubtedly covers oilfield security detachments that could be manned by the Chinese army.

China has taken little trouble to disguise her deployment of troops into the province of Gilgit-Baltistan, in northern Pakistan – it is not by any means unthinkable for her to put troops in Iran, if she can arrange to.  The location of the areas where China will operate is equally interesting.  In addition to the Persian Gulf coast – reportedly out to 8 km (5 statute miles/4 nautical miles) seaward – the Chinese will be in an area running from Ilam province up to Marivan along the border with Iraq (see map). There is an additional concession in northwestern Iran on the Caspian Sea coast.

China on Iran-Iraq border. Map of oil deposits from www.gregcroft.com. Author annotations

China is already developing oil and gas resources on the Iraqi side of the border, across from Ilam province (see map).  In late December, China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) shipped the first oil to market from the Al-Ahdab field in Iraq’s Wasit province.  CNPC is also developing the Halfaya oilfield, southwest of Al-Ahdab in Maysan province (and is a participant in oilfield development in Rumaila, in Iraq’s southern tip).

Iran’s oil and gas deposits are located almost entirely on her western border.  But Iraq’s are more geographically diverse, and China’s choice in Iraq was to pursue oilfields near the southern border with Iran.  The oilfields where China operates – if Rumaila is included – lie on either side of the Iraqi approach through Basra province to the Shatt-al-Arab, where the Tigris-Euphrates empties into the Persian Gulf.  With positions commanding the Iran-Iraq border and the long-disputed Shatt-al-Arab, China could hardly have selected a more geopolitically significant area in which to establish a presence – and have a plausible reason to transship lots of huge things in big containers.  Meanwhile, of course, she gets oil out of it as well.

It would be wrong to think of this move as a precursor to conducting offensive war.  That is not Beijing’s objective.  What the Chinese have in mind is establishing an influence with both Iraq and Iran that would ensure China’s participation in resolving disputes, making new accords, and agreeing on principles for regional order.  China doesn’t want to fight the United States in the Persian Gulf, but she hopes to deter the US and NATO by claiming a Chinese stake in the targets we might have to attack, and the arrangements we might seek to undo.

What, after all, will we do about oil shipments from Iran to China?  If they are contracted by China and handled by, say, a Liberian-flagged tanker owned by an Asian or Middle Eastern nation, will we go beyond issuing warnings to actually attacking oil tankers, or punishing nations with which we have good relations?  We could ask similar questions about offshore oil rigs in Iranian waters being defended by detachments of Chinese soldiers.

The naval component

China isn’t leaving the balance of naval power in the Persian Gulf region to chance: in December 2011, the Chinese were “considering” a basing offer from the Seychelles, in the Indian Ocean east of Africa, which would allow Beijing’s navy to improve infrastructure there and keep a larger naval force deployed continuously.  The Chinese have developed basing facilities at Djibouti, on the Red Sea, as well as having built the Pakistani port of Gwadar, immediately outside the Persian Gulf (and having conducted an intensifying series of live military exercises with Pakistan over the past 12 months).  The Chinese navy has conducted a number of port visits in Oman as well, since starting its antipiracy/shipping escort patrols in the Gulf of Aden and Arabian Sea in 2008.  The naval basing options to which China can have access have multiplied significantly in the last 3 years.

Russia too is negotiating a naval services agreement with the Seychelles, and has more naval force forward deployed right now than she has at any time since 1991.  Besides the Admiral Kuznetsov carrier task force in the Mediterranean, the Russian navy is keeping its antipiracy/escort task force in the Gulf of Aden – except when the Pacific fleet task force en route the antipiracy mission is conducting a maritime exercise with India.

It remains to be seen if either Russia or China will be able to deploy forces like reconnaissance or land-based bomber aircraft, which require the use of regional airfields.  They may or may not have the cooperation of South Asian nations in that regard.  But they will both have the Seychelles, for at least some purposes.

Again, neither nation wants to get into a fight with the US or NATO.  What they want to do is discourage the West from acting summarily on its own initiative, by putting a deterrent presence of their own in the region.  The Western nations would not have a free hand in that case, and all calculations would be different.

A watershed test of Western will

An example of what Russia and China want to be able to enforce was observed earlier this month in the Mediterranean.  Sanctions, including a prohibition on arms imports, are being enforced on Syria while the bloody Assad regime continues to slaughter its people.  With the Russian carrier task force on station – the largest aggregation of deployed naval power in the Med at the moment – Moscow conducted a significant test of the will of the US and EU.  The result was that a cargo ship carrying Russian arms was allowed to proceed to Syria, in violation of the sanctions, after giving Cypriot authorities a false assurance that its destination would not be Syria.  NATO made no attempt to intercept the arms delivery to Assad.

Russia is justified in supposing that this passivity from NATO was a result of the presence of Russian naval power.  Perhaps the decisive factor was actually the indifference of Western governments, but with this little episode, the Russians have established at the very least that naval power reinforces indifference.  That, at any rate, is the lesson they will take from it.  A similar principle can be applied in the Persian Gulf.

Western media took little notice of the Russian arms shipment to Syria, which was followed immediately by the announcement of a Russian military aircraft sale to Syria.  The Atlantic West failed this test of will, and Russia is likely to grow bolder in propping up the Assad regime.  (Note:  although Russia’s behavior is in one sense clearly immoral, it is understandable from the standpoint of Russia’s security.  The Russians cannot accept an outcome in which Turkey gets to effectively choose the new leadership of a post-Assad Syria.  Yet that is precisely the result the Obama administration is fostering.  If it is true that Erdogan is dying of cancer, Moscow will hope to keep a clamp on the status quo at least until the situation in Turkey changes.)

What about that pipeline?

Meanwhile, one other interesting development – or rather, lack of development – rounds out the evolving conditions of the post-American world.  There has long been hope for the oil pipeline being built across Oman to link the Persian Gulf and Arabian Sea while bypassing the Strait of Hormuz.  The pipeline was begun in early 2009; January 2012 would seem to be just the time to inaugurate it, to the acclaim of a relieved world.  The UAE – from whose Persian Gulf coast the pipeline originates – has been promising for nearly a year that oil would start flowing through the pipeline soon.

In early January, however, unnamed sources disclosed that inauguration of the pipeline would be delayed until at least mid-2012 (see here as well).  All shareholders in the pipeline corporation reportedly declined to comment to the media – including the construction contractor for the pipeline, a subsidiary of China’s CNPC.

Why would China want to delay making the pipeline operational?  Perhaps because relief from the pressure of the Strait of Hormuz crisis would be an advantage for the US-led status quo – whereas keeping the pressure on, in the current conditions, creates incentives for the Gulf nations to seek new patronage.  Certainly China can negotiate better deals with an Iran under the gun.  Meanwhile, China’s central position as the pipeline’s contractor means that if the Hormuz crisis does come to a head, China can bargain hard with the nations under economic stress demanding to have its flow turned on.  It is not clear what’s behind the pipeline delay, but it is clear who derives advantage from it.

Americans and Europeans might recoil from an analysis like this – but readers from Vietnam or Japan probably won’t, nor will many others from the Asian-Pacific region.  This is the model of geopolitical pressure, maneuver, and intimidation on which China does business.  Russia does too, for that matter, but China has a greater advantage in stealth vis-à-vis Western knowledge and expectations.

The drama playing out across the Middle East gives us an excellent glimpse of what the world will be like without a governing hand from American power.  And if the Western nations can no longer justify using power to preserve and foster our trademark conditions of quiescent safety for national borders, commerce, travel, and intellectual exchange – instead deprecating and apologizing for any condition that has to be enforced – the world will have little use for Western leadership.  If the fate of other peoples is to be condemned to negotiate bad deals with Chinese oligarchs, from various positions of weakness, there is no advantage in being lectured by Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, or a parade of irritable Europeans as the iron gates swing shut.

J.E. Dyer’s articles have appeared at The Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions,” Patheos, The Weekly Standard online, and her own blog, The Optimistic Conservative.

The strategic drivers

Once Iran is destabilized, the picture gets murkier from the standpoint of a great Asian power.  Either the US has a specific plan to re-stabilize Iran – which would probably reestablish a US presence there – or the Obama administration really doesn’t understand how alarming the prospect of a destabilized Iran is, and has no plan.  In either case, the potential outcome is worrisome or undesirable.  Asian leaders can’t just sit there and watch something develop without preparing for what might happen.

The question is not whether they will prepare, but what they will do.  India is an important factor, because whoever she aligns more closely with – Russia, presumably – will derive advantage from that.  But in terms of actively trying to shape the outcome in Iran, the actors with capability and history are Russia and China.  Both of them want to wield the major Asian influence over Iranian policy, and – perhaps more importantly – neither is willing to see the other gain the upper hand.

The basic conditions, which always have to be explained to Westerners, are geographic.  Iran naturally commands the Persian Gulf and anchors Southwest Asia.  She is the major power across the Caspian Sea from Russia.  Her population is vigorous and educated; she has a unifying national idea from out of the depths of history that no other nation in her immediate vicinity can claim.

Iran is a tremendous prize; neither Russia nor China is so foolish as to imagine ruling her directly, but obtaining her as a client is viewed by both as a major power-and-security move.  It would give them a foothold closer to the “Great Crossroads” of the Middle East-Africa-Europe juncture than either has yet obtained.

What Russia and China will not tolerate, if they can help it, is an Iran that falls either to the other or to the influence of the United States.  The Russians and Chinese have both made it clear, in numerous ways, that they are not willing participants in any global vision the US may choose to operate on.  They are no more interested in waiting for Barack Obama to reorder the world for them, through his trademark passive-aggressive approach, than they were for Bush II, Clinton, or Bush I to do it by their methods.

Potential courses of action

What can Russia and China do to respond to the toughened sanctions being imposed on Iran?  They can breach the sanctions; they can prepare for what they perceive to be US intentions; and they can seek to influence the political outcome in Iran, where the leadership is increasingly in disarray and may indeed lose its footing as the bite of sanctions intensifies.

It would not be difficult at all for Russia to continue to trade with Iran.  Russia has what no other G-8 power has:  an inland sea shared with Iran, where conventional US or NATO forces would find operations inconvenient in the extreme, both logistically, militarily, and politically.  China does not enjoy that advantage, but there are other ways into Iran, such as through Afghanistan and Iraq.  The US and NATO don’t control all the roads through Afghanistan, and the US no longer patrols the border between Iraq and Iran.

Certainly, the most convenient method of trading in oil and gas products with Iran is through the network of maritime terminals set up in the south.  But with the help of an outside partner, Iran could adapt relatively quickly to a different logistic footprint.

Meanwhile, we should not discount the options Iran may have from her southern coast.  The sanctions-evasion industry that grew up around Iraq between 1991 and 2003 involved actors in Iran, the UAE, and Oman (non-government actors in the latter two, to be sure, but the governments did little to interdict their activities.  See here for an analysis from 2009 of Iran’s evasion options).  Someone in the Persian Gulf is always up for profiting from sanctions evasion, and if the contraband network involved Russia, China, India, or other interested nations as clients, its appeal would only be increased.

The banking sanctions can certainly hurt Iran a great deal in the short term, but they also create conditions in which it would be an indispensable relief for a nation like Russia or China to come in with cash under the table.  Neither Moscow nor Beijing would do that out of compassion; the purpose would be to influence the course of political events in Tehran.  Against the assumption that the mullahs would have nothing to do with them must be set the reality that economic conditions are deteriorating rapidly.  The regime has a survival problem.

Since the end of World War II, both Russia and China have sought repeatedly to secure influence abroad by bolstering miscreant regimes against the policies of the West. They have had varying degrees of success, but the point to be disproven today is not why they would attempt it with Iran, but why they wouldn’t.  We can assume without demur that both Moscow and Beijing have an active interest in “picking” the leadership that will establish itself out of a destabilized Iran.

My own view is that if the US took a more active interest in cultivating a new leadership from among the liberalizing elements in Iran, we would have a good opportunity to succeed.  Iranians have no illusions about the intentions of Russia or China.  The idea that those nations’ purposes would be more consonant with the sentiments of Iranians, whether the political leaders or the average people, is laughable.

But successful support of this kind cannot be accomplished without an overtly articulated moral and political case for it.  The best way Obama could help Iranian reformers is by stating that the US is behind them.  Reagan’s success with this approach stands out against decades of failure with the more Obama-like ambivalent rhetoric from both Democrats and Republicans.  You cannot induce at-risk nations into liberalizing by applying secret-squirrel methods inside a cone of political silence.  This is a case in which the only effective approach is to state your intentions and lead from the front.

The military aspect

Besides breaching the sanctions and seeking to foster a client regime in Iran, Russia, in particular, can be – and is – preparing to counter US/NATO military action.  That doesn’t mean China has made no “military” noises; in fact, a Chinese general has been quoted as saying that a US attack on Iran would launch World War III.  China has conducted major military exercises with Pakistan – Iran’s neighbor to the east – this past year; has a military build-up underway in Pakistan’s northern territories (namely, Gilgit-Baltistan); and has a growing and respectable capability to project power in the Indian Ocean.  (At the end of December, the Russian navy also had talks with the Seychelles about using Port Victoria for Russian naval operations.)

But Russia’s territory abuts Iran’s to the north, and the Caucasus and Central Asian ‘Stans are the southern flank of Moscow’s “near abroad.”  The Russians are worried – to the extent of moving troops to the south, near the border with Turkey, evacuating families from military posts in the Caucasus, and conducting a large military exercise in the Caspian Sea, simulating the defense of oil and gas interests against an attack by Western forces.  The oil and gas infrastructure in the Caspian Sea belongs to multiple nations; one implication of the Russian exercise is that Russia wants to be able to pursue joint commercial interests with Iran in spite of sanctions, and that the Caspian Sea is the nexus of that intention.  Supposing that Russia merely intends to “help Iran” by defending Iranian assets is too narrow an interpretation.

Russia is also building both a case and a capability to eliminate Georgia as a potential base for US operations – and to secure Georgian territory for logistic support to Russian forces in Armenia.  Multiple sources quote Russian military leaders as complaining that their logistic freedom is constrained by Georgia’s denial of a key transport route.  And in mid-December, the chairman of the Russian Security Council – not an anonymous functionary, but the chairman himself – announced that Moscow was worried about a force of terrorists supposedly being readied in Georgia for attacks on Russia, specifically attributing this to Georgian government policy.

While manufacturing a case against Georgia, Russia has also consolidated the command structure of her Black Sea naval forces and put them at the highest readiness level (see RT link above).  These are the ships that will blockade Georgia in the case of a Russian takeover.

Many readers are also aware that Russia has dispatched a naval task force to the Mediterranean, built around the aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov.  The naval love-fest continues between Russia and Greece:  Kuznetsov conducted flight operations in Greek waters on 5-6 January, and her escorts pulled into Tartus, Syria on the 7th.  From the Kremlin, Kuznetsov’s presence looks as much like the spearhead of a potential deterrent against US action in the Black Sea as it does anything else.  Of course, Russia intends to stake her claim on Syria and support the Assad regime, but since 2007, when Putin proclaimed a return of Russian force to the global stage, it has been wrong to interpret the strategic purposes of Russian deployments narrowly.

It’s also worth noting that Russia’s core security alliance, the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), conducted a major military exercise in September in which it simulated preventing the construction of a gas pipeline between Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan.  Such a pipeline could only get going with outside support from a presumably Western (perhaps Chinese) partner.  Russia is starting to put serious ideas of military force behind her strategic concern that her rivals are all up in her Kool-Aid, and the actions of the Obama administration are having the opposite of a reassuring effect.

Russia’s preparations for something that many Americans reflexively assume will not happen are both extensive and expensive.  In the wake of his inconsistent responses to the Arab Spring revolts, it is logical for Russia and other nations to read Obama as unpredictable, and to see him as dismissive of the repercussions of his policies for the rest of the world.

Obama’s lack of strategic understanding will only carry US policy so far.  Iran has more options than simply collapsing and hollering “Uncle!” under the Western sanctions.  Any of those options entails a major shift of power liaisons in the Eastern hemisphere.  Team Obama seems to be proceeding as if none of that matters.  But it does.

J.E. Dyer’s articles have appeared at The Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions,” Patheos, The Weekly Standard online, and her own blog, The Optimistic Conservative.

Now, in 2011, would be the worst of times for the US Senate to ratify the UN Convention on Law of the Sea (UNCLOS; or, “Law of the Sea Treaty”: LOST).

Ratification would presuppose an internationally agreed maritime order into which the US was buying.  The nature of that order is tacitly supposed to be one of agreements, definitions, and legalities; in essence, the form of international order to which the United Nations was intended to give impetus.

Realities of maritime order

But no such order exists, nor has it ever.  There is no overarching order for the US to buy into: nothing that exists independently of the use of force and the expression of credible intent by the most powerful nations.  That is why the early indicators of the demise of the Pax Americana are appearing in the maritime realm.  The great oceans are much like the old American frontier: regulated largely by custom and the firearm, sometimes unsafe for the vulnerable bits of civilization, and held in check by the vigilance of hanging judges and the threat of visits from the Army.

For the basis of order to change, the assumptions and activities of key players have to change.  Roving criminal bands have to perceive that their opportunities are increasingly closed off by a stronger order: that the cost of crime outweighs the benefits.  Strongmen have to accept the supervision of a civil order in which they may suffer losses or have to compromise on what they want.  The vulnerable have to be satisfied that they are safe if they relinquish a posture of armed vigilance.

Only the United States – a continent-size maritime power and the sheriff of the seas for the last 65 years – and America’s formal allies have been able to cultivate the open-minded, complacent attitude required of participants in a meaningful UNCLOS.  The basis of UNCLOS was American dominance of the seas; without it, UNCLOS is meaningless.  No independently-motivated power will voluntarily adhere to it where it requires compromise and the relinquishing of national purposes.  We are seeing that with unvarnished clarity in the Eastern Mediterranean and the South China Sea.

Turkey and China worry everyone in their neighborhoods.  Turkey is not a state participant in UNCLOS; China is.  But their attitudes toward the maritime rights of their neighbors are basically identical: neither regards international custom, UNCLOS, or the UN as an arbiter that can limit their claims or purposes.  So they behave as if international expectations don’t even exist.  Their neighbors take refuge in claims lodged with the UN, in alliances of convenience, in diplomatic protests.  Turkey and China respond with force and threats.

Cyprus, the next act

The drama off Cyprus, where US firm Noble Energy is drilling for natural gas, is now six weeks old and showing no sign of diplomatic resolution.  Turkey’s exploration ship K. Piri Reis was reportedly set to wrap up seismic profiling in the past week, but a second and third ship have been dispatched to “conduct exploration” for Turkey in Cyprus’ economic exclusion zone (EEZ).

The significance of that is overshadowed in most media reporting by the excitement of the related military activity.  But the important thing that’s happening is that Turkey is operating ships in Cyprus’ EEZ, for economic-exploitation purposes, and no one is doing anything effective about it.  The meaning of having an EEZ claim registered with the UN is thus being eroded before our eyes.

The additional ships contracted by Turkey are the Norwegian-flagged survey vessels Bergen Surveyor (now in the Black Sea following operations off Cyprus) and Oceanic Challenger, which are working for the Paris-headquartered corporation CGG Veritas.  That is interesting in itself, of course, since it’s easy to detect that the work is being done in Cyprus’ EEZ, but without the approval of Nicosia.

Cypriot sources reported Bergen Surveyor as active in the Republic’s EEZ, off the Western end of the island, as early as 6 October.  Cypriot bloggers suggested their government was appealing to France and Norway to keep their assets out of the dispute, and some concluded in mid-October that the appeal had been effective, since Bergen Surveyor was operating outside of – or no closer than the extreme northwestern tip of – the oil-and-gas deposit zone (see the blocks outlined on the map).

Outline of oil/gas blocks in the Cyprus EEZ, Levantine Basin

But the area of operations by the Turkish-contracted ships is inside the Cyprus EEZ, as that EEZ is designated under UNCLOS.  It is further noteworthy that the Cypriot exploration to which Turkey objects – taking place in Block 12 (“Aphrodite”) of the Levantine Basin deposits – is well outside of any Turkish maritime claim (or any potential claim by “Northern Cyprus,” for that matter.  See the map of Turkey’s idea of proper maritime-claim delineations).

Turkey’s move is thus not motivated by a claim to the seabed deposits in the area south of Cyprus; she has made none.  It’s not a matter of muscling Cyprus away from a gas deposit claimed by Turkey or Northern Cyprus.  It’s a general power move that places Turkey at odds with the international system of maritime claims by which Cyprus is operating.  Turkey is registering non-acceptance of maritime claims in EASTMED in general.

I don’t assess this to be a confused, abstract move on Turkey’s part; I believe the Erdogan government sees maritime claims as a key security and power issue, and views the claims of all parties in the Aegean and off the coasts of Syria, Lebanon, and Israel as of integral significance to Turkey.  This is a geostrategic view that appreciates the importance to Turkey’s security of the maritime approaches – and their importance to Erdogan’s neo-Ottoman aspirations.  By the lights of the Ottoman legacy, the coasts of Syria, Lebanon, and Israel are as much Turkey’s concern as the Bosporus, the Aegean islands, and the waters off Antalya.

For Turkey to operate from this visceral, historical sense of things is not nefarious in itself.  Geography and history are what they are.  But Erdogan is not “picking his battles” in a defensive security policy; he is starting new ones, for purposes beyond security and self-defense.  As a member of NATO, Turkey started out with presumptions in her favor, and might have approached her concerns with Cyprus and the maritime claims of EASTMED very differently.  But Erdogan has instead chosen confrontation and tacit rejection of international conventions.

Russia to the rescue, Israel over EASTMED

Because Erdogan’s NATO allies aren’t taking order to him, the other nations of the region are beginning to show force and advertise their alliances.  As previously announced, Russia sent an amphibious landing ship full of Russian marines (naval infantry) to join Greece in a naval commemoration at the end of October.  The RS Tsesar Kunikov docked in Alexandroupolis, near the Turkish Straits:  a pointed allusion to the city’s brief history.  It was built by the Ottoman Empire and called Dedeagac – a waypoint on the Ottomans’ 19th-century railroad extension into Europe – but captured by Russia in an invasion in 1877.  The Ottomans reclaimed it in 1878, but it went first to Bulgaria and then to Greece in the aftermath of the Balkan Wars (1911-13) and the Greco-Turkish War of 1919-22.  The Greeks renamed it Alexandroupolis in honor of their king at the time, Alexander I.

In last week’s commemorative ceremony, Russian naval infantry marched through Alexandroupolis with Greek marines, and the Greeks don’t appear to have been so excited about anything for a long time.  (Reportedly, anti-government protesters suspended their activities in favor of the ceremony.)  More than one website retails the story of how the enlightened Russian occupiers built a system of broad avenues through Alexandroupolis during their brief reign there in the 1870s, as opposed to the crabbed labyrinth of culs-de-sac favored by the secretive Ottomans.   If there isn’t an aphorism about how it takes the Turks to make you appreciate a Russian invasion, there ought to be.

In Cyprus, meanwhile, Israel last week dispatched a force of 16 fighter aircraft, tankers, and six IDF helicopters to conduct a military exercise with the Cypriot armed forces.  (The Turks responded but kept their distance.)  Israel has multiple security concerns for which having access to Cyprus would play a useful role; protecting her own offshore gas activities is certainly an important one.

Israel and Cyprus have in common their resistance to living under terms dictated by Turkey, whether the subject is the gas trade, their maritime claims, or their general security.  Besides her gas deposits, Israel is eying the threat from Hezbollah in Lebanon and Assad in Syria; even with respect to the asymmetric threat growing in the Sinai, Israel will benefit from an expansion of her geographic options.  So Shimon Peres is heading for Cyprus this week.

On the other side of Asia

Across Asia in the South China Sea, the confrontation between China and her neighbors continues at a low boil.  Unlike Turkey, China is a state participant in UNCLOS, and has registered a set of wildly excessive maritime claims with the UN.  China’s claims (see map) would leave her neighbors with little opportunity for offshore development, but accord Beijing the ability to hold almost the entire body of water at risk with coastal cruise missiles.

The Philippines has proposed, in the ASEAN forum, a concept for joint economic development in disputed areas of the South China Sea (SCS).  Vietnam endorsed the Philippine plan when President Truong Tan Sang visited Filipino President Benigno Aquino last week, signing agreements on naval and intelligence cooperation and committing to a hotline between the coast guards of Hanoi and Manila.  The Philippines has moved forward with a proposal for a special session of ASEAN defense ministers to discuss the joint-development concept – which, with momentum building for it in ASEAN, is the main idea on the table right now.

China is not a member of ASEAN, however, and a few days ago a state-owned media outlet, Global Times, issued yet another threat to China’s SCS neighbors.  An editorial in Global Times warned the “little countries” to “prepare for the sound of cannons [sic],” causing the Philippines’ foreign secretary to issue a stern rebuke.

Fishing disputes

But the SCS nations aren’t the only ones who think Global Times was referring to them.  Granted, the Philippines has been dealing for some time with Chinese fishing boats operating – with Beijing’s blessing – in her EEZ, and on 18 October, her coast guard had an accidental collision with a fishing mothership that was towing fishing boats near one of the disputed Spratly Islands.

South Korea, however, announced detaining three Chinese fishing ships, with 31 crewmembers, on 21 October, because the Chinese were encroaching on South Korean waters (a persistent problem for the Koreans as well as for the Philippines).  The ensuing brouhaha prompted editorialists at Chosun Ilbo to suspect that the “sound of cannons” comment was directed at Seoul.  And Japan had a minor incident of her own on the 25th, when the Japanese coast guard confronted two Chinese fisheries-patrol ships operating in the contiguous zone off the Senkaku Islands.

An absentee sheriff

As with the EASTMED dispute, the US is a negligible quantity at the diplomatic and strategic level.  Leon Panetta, making his first trip to Asia as secretary of defense last week, was recorded assuring ASEAN members that the US would maintain our military presence in the Pacific as a counterweight to China.  This is the kind of thing that is already less than credible if you actually have to say it.  It’s certainly not the centerpiece of a positive policy.  The momentum in the Pacific is with China and the jostling Asian powers – which ought to give us pause, in the US, since we do maintain a still-significant military presence there.

As with the NATO alliance and our defense alliance with Israel (indeed, our defense cooperation with Egypt and Jordan as well), our alliances in East Asia will begin to back us into confrontations we are not making the requisite strategic effort to ward off.  If we aren’t taking the lead in influencing events, using all the tools of state power, our alliances and military deployments can begin to look like absent-minded vulnerabilities – or ill-conceived provocations.

The US Marines, for example, conducted an annual landing exercise earlier in October with their Philippines counterparts on the west-central coast of Luzon, the northernmost of the major Philippine islands.  The coast fronts on a region of the SCS which Manila disputes with Beijing; Marine Corps spokesmen declined to address any idea of political overtones to the exercise.  As with US Naval exercises with Vietnam held in the summer, the joint events are always “annual” or “previously scheduled,” and are left otherwise without strategic context: left to communicate, in a changing geopolitical environment, whatever China and other regional nations want to divine from them.

This may sound clever to the sensibility of some people – it has Robert S. McNamara written all over it – but that doesn’t make it wise or sound policy.  The strategically significant message we want to send China isn’t actually “We will put our Marine Corps in your face and you can read what you like into that.”  That’s a negative, triangulating kind of message, one that gives hope to no one and shape to nothing.  If we are going to keep US military power in Asia, we should not be there to, in effect, provoke China, nor should we be there merely as an enforcer – a hired goon squad – for the initiatives and security emergencies of our Asian allies.

Ensuring that we and our allies are agreed on basic objectives is, of course, a process of give and take.  We are as interested in their goals and concerns as we are in ours.  But ultimately, we have a military presence in East Asia because we have our own objectives there.  We’re not there to intimidate China on behalf of Vietnam and the Philippines – or at least, if we are, we are behaving according to a separate set of rules from those of statesmanship and accountable policy.

China is watching developments in EASTMED.  Beijing will take lessons from whatever happens there, and the principal lesson will be the involvement of the US – or lack of it – and the extent to which we shape the outcome or have it handed to us.  If Turkey is able to change the security regime to her advantage, China will be emboldened to try the same.

It’s still not too late for the US to weigh in with Turkey, bringing NATO and our bilateral relations to bear.  One of the best favors we could do UNCLOS is get Turkey to honor it in her dealings with her EASTMED neighbors.  As long as major nations like Turkey and China see UNCLOS as either a negligible obstacle or as something to be exploited, the convention itself is meaningless without assertive enforcement.  Where there is no sheriff, the law is a matter of convenience for the strong – and no protection for the weak.

J.E. Dyer’s articles have appeared at The Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions,” Patheos, The Weekly Standard online, and her own blog, The Optimistic Conservative.

The ante is being upped in the Eastern Mediterranean as the crisis south of Cyprus bubbles along.  Turkish news outlet Today’s Zaman reports that on Monday, the Turkish government announced a deployment of special forces along with the four frigates and naval helicopters maintaining a “security” presence in the undersea drilling area off Cyprus’ southern coast.  The special forces include a Special Underwater Defense Unit and a Special Underwater Attack Unit.

Reporting the deployment of the Underwater Attack Unit is obviously a political move.  The unit has quite probably been deployed as indicated, but pointing out that it’s there can only have a political purpose.  Announcing that your special forces are coming is not generally the prelude to deniable covert action.

The Erdogan government is probably increasing its force profile in order to establish a posture for bargaining.  That doesn’t mean that the Turks aren’t serious, or that they wouldn’t take military action; they’re not bluffing.  I do think they believe, however, that the EU will blink first.

What’s the US doing?

This may be because they appear to believe the US will intervene on their behalf in the coming days.  According to the government-friendly Today’s Zaman, an elaborate interlocking quid pro quo is being set up in which the Turkish government offloads its interest in a Turkish-Russian natural gas pipeline (the one known as “South Stream”) to private companies, and the US supports Turkey’s oil/gas claims in EASTMED.

The US has long preferred the EU-backed “Nabucco” pipeline over South Stream, for moving gas from Central Asia to Europe.  Throughout the last decade, however, Russia maneuvered to inhibit progress on Nabucco (yes, named after the Verdi opera) by co-opting one potential participant after another.  (In one last-ditch effort, Russia’s Gazprom averted an Azerbaijani commitment to Nabucco by the simple expedient of buying up all the gas Baku was selling.)

Here is Today’s Zaman (emphasis added):

The [Nabucco] pipeline will also help improve relations with the US by lessening Russia’s influence in the region. Turkey reportedly expects to gain US support to be part of the natural gas and oil exploration process by Israel and Greece in the eastern Mediterranean, which Turkey also has rights to through the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus’ (KKTC) presence in the area.

It is not exactly looking in the rearview mirror for the US administration to prioritize wining support for Nabucco, and reducing Turkey’s stake in South Stream.  But it’s close.  It’s worth noting at the outset that for Turkey, consigning her interest in South Stream to private companies is not the same thing as divorcing herself from the project.  It’s merely putting Turkish participation in a different context, one that seems more meaningful to the US government than to Turkey’s.

But the importance of the whole “Nabucco versus South Stream” dynamic has receded significantly, with, first of all, the emergence of both of them as funded, viable projects, and second, with the Arab Spring and the increasing Islamization and activism of Turkey under a neo-Ottoman regime.  Seeing Turkey’s participation in these pipelines as a prize to be won is yesterday’s strategic factor: it has been overtaken by events.  Turkey has already agreed to participate in both.  Let her.

Given Turkey’s increased saber-rattling, Russia is likely to slow down on the Turkish segment of South Stream anyway.  Turkey is upping the ante on South Stream by forcing Russia to renegotiate the sale of gas to Turkey.  The Russians and Turks are both masters of the art of negotiating to retain leverage and slow things down, as opposed to negotiating to get things done.  Meanwhile, the North Stream pipeline into Germany has a more promising financial future in the next decade.

Russia is concerned about Erdogan’s behavior, and is cultivating friendships on the other side of Turkey in EASTMED.  A Russia-Turkey cabal is not our greatest worry today.  If Today’s Zaman is right about the quid pro quo here, the Obama administration is spending too much to buy something worth very little.

A bad solution, way overpriced

The price is too high in part because it will be a triumph for Turkey’s saber-rattling if she gets what she has wanted all along:  a veto over oil-and-gas activities in EASTMED.  (The other part is the encouragement such an outcome would be for Turkey’s stated intention to ramp up her naval posture in the region.  More Turkish warships and aircraft patrolling EASTMED on a routine basis is not a stabilizing development.)

I’ve been predicting that what Turkey wants is a multilateral mechanism in which she can exercise the veto she craves.  As the situation is developing now, Cyprus and Israel, having agreed on a maritime delineation of their Economic Exclusion Zones, are proceeding – quite properly, by the terms of international law – without reference to Turkey.  Turkey doesn’t want to start a war: she wants to leverage military threats to create a need for bargaining, and for a multilateral decision-making body in which she will participate.  Through such a body, Turkey would get a seat at the table for matters she has no natural right to exercise a veto over, and she could ultimately prevent everything except what she wants to do.

If the US goes through with the diplomatic effort suggested by the Today’s Zaman article, and if the gambit succeeds, Erdogan will have achieved his goal, and the US government will have been his path of least resistance.  There is also the possibility of not succeeding; e.g., if we assume that the emerging gambit is opposed by Russia, the major nations of the EU, and Israel.  A diplomatic black eye for the US would be the least of the evils here, but the entire situation has a shabby, regrettable character; the US figures in it not as a superpower and arbiter, but as a target for diplomatic exploitation.

La France Surcouf

As the Obama administration practices leading from behind, others are polishing up their leading-from-the-front skills.  Greek news sources report that France is dispatching her own frigate, FS D’Estienne d’Orves, to patrol the afflicted area off Cyprus.  A caveat must be entered on this:  D’Estienne d’Orves will apparently not conduct a dedicated patrol in EASTMED; she will be heading for antipiracy operations in the Indian Ocean, and stopping for a show of maritime presence along the way.

That said, if Greek commentators are overstating the import of the frigate’s activities en route, it is only in a tactical sense.  In a strategic sense, France is on the move, and whatever her navy does will take on greater significance in the coming days.  There has been no question that France played the leading political and geostrategic role in the NATO operation in Libya, a reality affirmed with the state visit to Libya of Nicolas Sarkozy, along with David Cameron, in September, and a growing taste in Europe for military photo ops like this one.

(As an aside, a recent report suggests that the main US contribution to the Libya operation – reconnaissance and surveillance – was largely disdained by the French pilots who have made up most of the air attack force.  The pilots’ complaint is that it takes too long for the video/imagery intelligence from US assets to be processed through the NATO command center in Italy, so they have frequently operated without it.  This is a particularly interesting indicator of the light political governor on NATO operations in Libya; in other operations, the concern about collateral damage and mistargeting has been too great for the participating forces to consider dispensing with synoptic intelligence.  Indeed, the targeting process in other operations has often been delayed by the need for strike approval at the highest echelons for the most minor tactical targets.  The apparent absence of this decision-making regime in the Libya operation is noteworthy.)

In just the last couple of days, France has announced her intention of establishing relations with the national council being formed by the Syrian opposition – another preemptive diplomatic action, and an interesting one in light of Turkey’s patent interest in the future of Syria, and the dust-up in the last few days over a call by Sarkozy for Turkey to acknowledge the slaughter of Armenians in World War I as a genocide.  Turkish news daily Hurriyet speculates on the return of a Franco-Turkish rivalry, like that which manifested itself after World War I in – naturally – Syria.

Britain may no longer have the view she once did of the strategic importance of EASTMED, but France has always had a view of her own – and today she has one of the biggest, best-equipped navies in the region.  Sarkozy has been criticized by French traditionalists for an uninspired foreign policy; he may or may not be responding to the complaints of the “Groupe Surcouf,” which posted a letter in February 2011, when the Libya crisis was spinning up, lamenting that “the voice of France has disappeared from the world.”

(The group is named after France’s famous “submarine-cruiser,” a big, heavy-gunned ship built to be capable of submerging, during the years of the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922, because the treaty did not impose limits on the size of a submarine.  Surcouf was a quintessentially French blow for ingenious French independence from France’s commitments to collective security arrangements.  If you can’t love France, you can’t love anything.)

French submarine-cruiser Surcouf; Wikimedia Commons

Sarkozy may simply see the need for a counterweight to the injudicious US policy toward Turkey.  The Turks aren’t the only ones who detect some big quos being handed out from Washington for their quids.  Besides beefing up Turkey’s force of AH-1W Super Cobras, which are being used for the ground operations against the Kurdish separatists in Eastern Turkey, the US is reportedly selling armed drones to Turkey (something we have, to date, sold only to the UK).  The quid from Turkey in this case is the agreement to host the X-band radar for the NATO missile defense system, something we didn’t actually need Turkey for, as Bulgaria was anxious to host it.  Hosting it in Turkey will create difficulties in the matter of sharing radar data with Israel – which is currently routine, since Israel also hosts an X-band radar and is linked in to the NATO data system.

Negotiate or we’ll shoot

The US approach to Turkey comes off as unwarrantedly enthusiastic and indiscriminate right now.  The concerns about Turkey are obvious to everyone in the region, yet US policy is to court and gratify Erdogan’s activism.  Whatever the EU’s rarefied stance, the nations of Europe will not join us in that burbling enthusiasm, and will find it natural instead to make common cause with a more wary Russia.  For our ally Israel it creates a separate but related set of concerns.  Israel too must lose no time in brushing up her alternatives, especially given the geographic importance of Syria to all the various EASTMED issues, including Israel’s own security.

It is both good news and bad news that when there is a power vacuum in Europe and the Med, rhetoric and posturing multiply far faster than actual armed encounters.  The good news is that shooting is likely to be postponed.  The bad news, however, is that while we congratulate ourselves on the good news, power relationships will be changing materially.  If Turkey succeeds, by making threats, in getting a veto she has no right to over the economic activities of others, everything will have already changed.

J.E. Dyer’s articles have appeared at The Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions,” Patheos, The Weekly Standard online, and her own blog, The Optimistic Conservative.

As the world takes off on its own, the directions it is going are predictable, but still poignant.  In some ways, it is as if the great paroxysms of the 20th century – World War I, the socialist revolutions, national socialism, World War II, the Cold War – “never even happened.”  In other ways, it’s as if the joke has ended up being on the victors from these turmoils.

With the guarantee of US supervision lifted, the old-style power and seniority that were once castigated as oppressive begin to look like sources of security.  Absurdities like the “Occupy Wall Street” demonstrations gain no traction because everyone’s gut sense is that something much bigger is going on.  The silly, ephemeral premises of the “Occupy Wall Street” crowd are a relic, a superannuated adolescent whine from an era when there was a sense of resignation about being able to afford a little bit of sophomoric foolishness.  No more.  Papa’s broke, and we can’t afford the waste and clean-up effort.

Germans are losing patience with the chronic dysfunction of the Southern European economies.  Russia – Russia! – is stepping in to help bail out the overextended.  The Russians may have a crummy political system and a mafia-style economy and repressed individual rights, but they take no prisoners when it comes to extracting and allocating profits from the natural gas trade.  So they have something that seems more important right now: cash.

It takes a whole heap of regulating to turn Western economies into supplicants and Russia and China into comparative cash-daddies, but we’ve managed it.  We have made it so illegal and costly to invest and profit in the West that sclerotic, oligarchic Russia and the one-trick pony that is China are positioned better than Western nations are to offer cash to the West’s biggest failures.  The US Congress even sits around voting on whether to get in a huff about China manipulating her currency.  There was a time when you couldn’t make people accept Chinese currency.  They’d run screaming in the other direction.  The Chinese regime hasn’t changed that much; we have.

In what Melanie Phillips calls a “world turned upside down” (a rhetorical nod to the tune supposedly played on the occasion of Cornwallis’ surrender at Yorktown), the Japanese last week hosted the defense ministers of ASEAN to discuss a common effort to contain China.  Japan, an observer in ASEAN, has been investing in Southeast Asia for decades now; ASEAN has met to discuss countering China before; but gathering the defense ministers in Japan is a new set-out.  Vietnam, the Philippines, Thailand, fellow ASEAN observer Australia – these nations meeting with Japan to discuss containing China resurrect echoes of the form international relations took before WWII, if not the particulars.

Adding to the sense of an alternate-universe reversion to the 1930s is South Korea’s decision to construct two new naval bases on islands off her coast.  One is to be on the island of Ulleung in the Sea of Japan, an island Seoul disputes with Tokyo (which calls the island Takeshima).  The other will entail the fortification of Jeju (Cheju-do), off South Korea’s southern coast at the western entrance to the Tsushima Strait, where the Yellow Sea meets the East China Sea.  Japan is not the concern behind this move; Russia and China are.  The perceived need for it has arisen for the same reason Southeast Asians are meeting with Japan to discuss security concerns: the credibility of US force and guarantees has diminished.

Islands around South Korea

It’s the same reason why Indonesia and Vietnam have agreed to set up joint naval patrols in the South China Sea, why Indonesia is looking to expand her navy dramatically and add a third geographic fleet organization, why the Philippines has been courting Japanese assistance in patrolling her sea lanes adjacent to the South China Sea, and why India is assembling her own “String of Pearls” to rival China’s South Asian maritime strategy.

India is very concerned about China in general, which leads to the title point about the US Army’s need for a motorcycle stunt team.  India’s army has one, and it did some serious riding in a display during India’s first military exercise with the armed forces of Mongolia in September.  Any army can do this (and it’s no big deal for air forces to do this, or navies to do this.  Showboating air forces can do this stuff in their sleep, and naval infantry or marines the world over, with their cool toys, have no trouble doing this, this, this, this, and this.  And anybody, basically, can do this).  But motorcycle stunt teams are few and far between, even if new strange bedfellows are now cropping up, geopolitically speaking, on a minimum two-per-week basis.

Meanwhile, over in the Eastern Mediterranean, tensions are high but haven’t bubbled over.  Both Turkey and Cyprus continue their maritime oil-and-gas activities.  Sensational rumors – almost none of them believable – abound regarding the reaction of Israel and the supposed counterreaction of Turkey.  (I give credence to the reports that Israel is keeping the Turkish warships under daily aerial surveillance, but discount the rest.)

Russia will be sending more warships to the Med after the Black Sea Fleet task force visits Greece and Montenegro later this month.  The aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov will reportedly leave the Barents in late November for a Med deployment, accompanied by at least one Udaloy-class destroyer.  The last time Admiral Kuznetsov was in the Med, in 2009, the ship made port calls in Syria and Turkey.  Russian ships are very unlikely to call in either nation this time around – but will be quietly welcomed by long-time allies of the United States.

There’s also the periodic destabilizing eruption from Syria’s promising liberal reformer, Bashar al-Assad, who stated earlier this week that he would ask for Hezbollah’s help attacking Israel with missiles and rockets if other nations use military force against his regime.  In his case, however, that’s not the world turned upside down, it’s just business as usual.

The world won’t right itself automatically if the US elects a different president next year.  But we need to keep in mind that the problems the world is sinking into are the result not of what we are doing, but of what we aren’t.

The West is slothful, confused, and tired, but not from overexertion.  In one of the most remarkable trends in history, we have ordered ourselves for no good reason to assume a listless, inert posture.  Nothing would help us as much as releasing ourselves from our own ridiculous constraints.  We don’t need to live by lies about what is good and what is bad; nothing fates us to accept an artificially constructed prison of regulation, “political correctness,” and suicidal self-abnegation.

There are millions of people whose potential and power have been artificially stifled by the distorted expectations of modern Western society.  A Greek woman of 50, who has been promised a right to retire at that age from the perilous, heavily regulated profession of hairdressing – and for whom more lucrative or creative arrangements were made impossible by regulation and taxes anyway – has been discouraged and underemployed as surely as the New Soviet Man ever was.  Kings in the Middle Ages, imposing sumptuary laws in the name of the Christian church, discouraged the industry and drive of their people no more effectively than the modern public education systems of Europe and North America.

But what we have done to ourselves can be undone.  It will have to be: there is no form of social organization that does what the political and economic freedom of the West – and especially of the USA – has done.  It is because we have turned our backs on it that the world has turned upside down.

A motorcycle stunt team for our army may not be the main thing we ought to look into, but it can’t hurt.  The nation whose army has the motorcycle stunt team has at least shown itself capable of adapting and facing reality.

J.E. Dyer’s articles have appeared at The Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions,” Patheos, The Weekly Standard online, and her own blog, The Optimistic Conservative.

The rest of the story can be summarized as follows.  On 19 September, Houston-based Noble Energy “spudded” an exploration well with its Noble Homer Ferrington drilling rig in the “Aphrodite” oil-and-gas field off Cyprus’ southern coast (you can’t make this stuff up).

Shortly thereafter, Turkey concluded an overnight agreement with the “nation” of Northern Cyprus – created by the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974 and recognized by Turkey – for Turkey to begin seismic exploration south of Northern Cyprus’ coast, in the waters next to the Noble Energy drilling area.

The Turks got their seismic exploration vessel, the K. Piri Reis, underway, and dispatched three naval ships for escort.  Piri Reis has reached her operating area and begun exploration.  The three-ship task force doesn’t have as much firepower as it might: it is reportedly composed of one frigate – the actual warship – a training ship, and an ocean tug.

That said, the Turks issued a NOTAM for a maritime exercise in the vicinity of the drilling area last week, within a day of the Noble rig’s arrival.  According to Greek sources, the NOTAM was rejected, but the Turks conducted a naval exercise there anyway, with warships and fighter jets.  The Greeks emitted a rhetorical high-five because the Turks didn’t approach the Noble drilling rig any closer than 50 nautical miles during this event.

The Turkish aircraft did, however, operate inside the Nicosia Flight Information Region (FIR) without following correct safety procedures, and managed to incommode at least one Cyprus Airways aircraft taking off from Larnaca.

Greek sources are now reporting – because it’s important to keep the fire stoked, I suppose – that Israel has requested authorization for the IAF to use the airfield on the island of Paphos, in exchange for “ensuring the air defense of the Republic and changing the military balance in the region.”  The quid is believable here; the quo is not.  Israel might well seek an agreement with Cyprus to use the Paphos air base, but deploying the IAF to patrol Cypriot air space is something Israel would save for a later decision point, presumably if Turkey escalated maritime tensions.

It would be a mistake to think Turkey is weak and is acting silly.  For Turkey, the drilling off Cyprus (and the Turkish exploration) is, in part, a pretext for keeping warships on patrol in the Eastern Med.  The warships are not going to pack up and go home any time soon.  Turkey has already announced a more active naval posture, and Erdogan will make good on that.  Look for Turkish warships to start patrolling further and further abroad.  Having ships in place to “escort flotillas” heading for the Gazan coast is likely to be a matter of warships already on-scene for “routine” patrols.  Turkey is changing her baseline naval posture, not merely responding ad hoc to random priorities.

The Turks are hardly driving out into a traffic jam:  the naval stalwarts of NATO – the US, the UK, France, the Netherlands – don’t make it over to the Eastern Med nearly as much as they used to.  Cash-strapped Greece has just announced a drawdown of participation in NATO naval operations because she really can’t even afford to patrol her own waters.  The vacuum being left by an inattentive United States and a lackadaisical NATO is becoming apparent.

In the middle of all this, Turkey has announced the delivery of her navy’s first homegrown frigate.  The timing, dovetailing with a repulsive comment by Erdogan about Israel and the Holocaust, generates something uncomfortably close to an Ahmadinejadian vibe.  (Turkey continues to deal quite pragmatically with Iran, cooperating on the project of suppressing the Kurds while intercepting Iranian arms shipments to Syria.  Turkey and Iran will not be forming a BFF Club any time soon.)

Who, incidentally, is coming to the rescue of Cyprus’ faltering financial situation?  That would be Russia, of course, which continues to have an interest in beefing up ties with Greece and Cyprus – geopolitically “flanking” Turkey – and establishing stakes in both Mediterranean frontage and oil-and-gas deposits.

I am unconvinced that Russia has dispatched “two nuclear submarines” to patrol the Eastern Med; I consider it a better assessment that no more than one has been deployed to the Med, if any.  A Russian nuclear attack submarine (SSN) would have to come from the Northern Fleet, in the Barents Sea, which has only 11 SSNs in the current order of battle.  (There are no nuclear submarines in the Black or Baltic Sea.) No more than 6-7 of the Northern Fleet SSNs are in “constant-ready” status at a given time.  I regard 5 as a better estimate.  Assuming the 6-7, however, and assuming the Russians hope to keep their SSNs in service, they can’t generate more than 4-6 long-range patrols per year with the number they have operational.

The Russian submarine force is naturally the naval element whose patrol patterns we know the least about today, but the Russians were at pains to make clear the resumption of a global presence starting in 2007, and the operation of an SSN off the US East coast in 2009.  A Mediterranean presence would be one among several priorities, and would be likely to result in about two total Med patrols per year (with about 45-50 days on-station), probably done as single patrols and spaced over time.

There may well be a Russian SSN in the Eastern Med right now, but I would be surprised if there’s more than one.  Russian nuclear subs almost never make port visits, as US and other NATO subs do when on deployment.  A Russian diesel-powered attack sub, a Kilo-class SS from the Baltic, participated visibly in a NATO submarine exercise off Spain’s southeastern coast this summer, and diesel-powered subs are more likely in general to make port calls.  The older ones in service have to expose their masts to snorkel anyway, and require refueling during deployments; they can’t maintain stealth on long-range deployments as nuclear-powered submarines can.

So the Russians can make claims that may or may not be true about deploying nuclear submarines, as a means of influencing the political situation.  It will be interesting to see if Russia lets the region glimpse, however briefly, a submarine that may be in the Eastern Med.  The implied long-term outcome of the Russian push with Cyprus (and Greece), coupled with the announcement of the sub deployments, is Russian use of their ports.  Making an SSN visible, even if only for half an hour, would reinforce that implication most effectively – especially assuming the SSN carries the SS-N-21 Sampson (RK-55 Granit), or “Tomahawkski,” land-attack missile.

Meanwhile, Russia will be reinforcing the general message about seapower and land influence in the Med with the deployment this fall of an amphibious landing ship to the Balkan Peninsula.  Ropucha LST Tsesar Kunikov will deploy from the Black Sea in October and November to conduct port visits in Greece and Montenegro (a Serb region of former Yugoslavia, located on the Adriatic Sea, where the port of Tivat, long used by the Soviet Navy, is situated).  The landing ship will participate in a ceremony on 20 October to commemorate the Battle of Navarino, a key confrontation of the year 1827 in the Greek war of independence against the Ottoman Empire.  (The Russians were on the side that defeated the Ottoman fleet.)

Such commemorations of history are typical of Russian policy, and never more so than when they make a strong point with modern rivals – in the present case, Turkey.  At this point, there is little reason to refer any longer to a Pax Americana.  The linchpin of the Pax Americana, the NATO alliance, is precisely what is being undermined by the migration of NATO allies Turkey and Greece away from common strategic objectives.  Russia – once the motivating factor for NATO – is now sought and cultivated by one ally out of concern about the other.  All things old are new again, we’re not in Kansas anymore, and peace in our time has some tough innings ahead of it.

J.E. Dyer’s articles have appeared at The Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions,” Patheos, The Weekly Standard online, and her own blog, The Optimistic Conservative.

For several days, the Security Council option of referring the statehood bid for study and consultation, rather than holding a vote and having the US veto it outright, has been a quiet buzz.  The decibel level increased yesterday, and Politico and Haaretz, among other outlets, have reported that the postponement option is gathering steam.  Ynet even reports a US plan for the statehood bid to be deferred for one year (which would put the next eruption in the fall of 2012, seemingly bad timing for an Obama reelection quest).

This makes perfect sense given the administration’s record of postponements on the US debt issue.  Indeed, 2011 may become the Year of Postponement, with the can kicked down the road on the US national debt and the Palestinian statehood question.  Abroad, the EU has been able so far to postpone a Greek default and the collapse of the euro – a bitter medicine Brussels (and Berlin) have not been prepared yet to go ahead and swallow.  In the South China Sea, China’s status quo-busting determination to drill for oil in the economic exclusion zone claimed by the Philippines has apparently entered a twilight zone, with the whereabouts of the giant marine drilling platform intended for the job unknown.  (The Filipinos, monitoring their EEZ daily, say the platform isn’t there.  Vietnam, which also patrols the South China Sea regularly, hasn’t publicly reported seeing it.)

A lot of freighted business is being rescheduled for 2012.  Postponing the Palestinian statehood question at the UN carries a danger that can be divided into at least two components.  One was articulated by an unnamed US official in Politico’s original reporting yesterday:

“It [deferral] actually is a good idea because it is like a Damocles [sword] hanging over our heads,” an American official said. “It creates an urgency to start negotiations.”

(Politico has removed this line from their article, but the original was spread verbatim to numerous other websites like this one. H/t:  Daled Amos.)

The Obama administration has reason to like the deferral option, because it puts the US in charge of a process and a threat held over Israel.  The move has obvious drawbacks, in that using the threat in the six weeks preceding the 2012 election looks pretty dumb, at least as things stand today.

But the other component of the danger is that postponing this reckoning leaves the parties with the same old failed “peace process” as the fallback position.  Yet Mahmoud Abbas is officially abrogating the peace process by going to the UN unilaterally.  His commitment to it, such as it ever was, has obviously expired, and with it Israel’s expectation of a serious negotiating partner.  There is, therefore, no peace process to fall back to – and with the prospect of simply renewing his unilateral UN push in a year’s time, Abbas has no incentive to participate meaningfully in a new set of talks.  His move this month will prove, after all, that the Obama administration would rather do just about anything than use the Security Council veto.

Preventing the Security Council from considering the motion at all – ensuring that Abbas can’t get the 9 of 15 votes that he needs – would still be the US administration’s preferred outcome at this point.  It is not impossible for a Security Council vote to be averted, although France just this morning broke with the Obama administration policy by calling for the Palestinians’ status in the UN to be upgraded, and for a statehood process, with “negotiations and a precise timetable,” to begin.  (Russia and China are expected to vote in favor of a Palestinian statehood resolution, but they are not twisting arms to make the vote happen.  The diplomatic energy is on the other side of the question.)

All that said, the US has articulated good reasons for a veto already, and a veto would be a better outcome than a deferral.  Deferring the question would effectively take all the old post-Oslo assumptions and move the process built around them into the UN, where multiple nations can stake out equities they don’t necessarily have in the current deliberations of the Quartet.  (France’s unexpectedly bold call for basically this plan seems motivated by the opportunity it presents for France to act outside the EU rubric.)

Deferral, particularly using some form of the active model implied by France, would also give Abbas a period in which other pressures were suspended.  He could focus on making exciting things happen with the Palestinians’ new status as a non-member observer state, which would vault them into organizations like the International Criminal Court.

A veto, on the other hand, would shut the door to unilateral approaches and put a period to a failed chapter in multilateral diplomacy.  Coupled with forward-looking initiative from the US, it would be an act of leadership, in default of which the most realistic prospect is of a full-scale reversion to the old, colonial/Ottoman-era patterns of European and Middle Eastern maneuvering.  In many ways, in other words, a return to the League of Nations model.

J.E. Dyer’s articles have appeared at The Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions,” Patheos, The Weekly Standard online, and her own blog, The Optimistic Conservative.

Today, 15 September, kicks off an 8-day period in which socialists, radical leftists, Islamists, and Palestinian activists will rail at a world that is disappearing.  The schedule includes the following:

15 September:  Rallies for Palestine in New York and other cities in the US and Europe

16 September:  Rally in Los Angeles to protest the US plan to veto the Palestinian statehood bid

17 September:  Day of Rage for the radical left, with protests in major cities and the 50 state capitals, plus an “occupation” of Wall Street

22 September:  Durban III conference to promote hysterical anti-Semitism at UN headquarters in New York (the US will not attend the conference, but it’s being held on our soil)

22 September:  Mahmoud Ahmadinejad address to the UN

23 September:  Palestinian delegation calls for a UN vote on Palestinian statehood

Most readers are aware of the issues surrounding the Palestinian statehood vote.  Besides there being, at present, no valid basis for the creation of a state – the leadership is divided, the elected leaders in Gaza and the West Bank have both stayed on after their terms ended with no new elections, the prospective state has no border and no agreements with its neighbors – there are the matters of persistent terrorism from Gaza, and the breach of the Oslo Accords represented by a unilateral statehood bid.  The US has excellent reasons for opposing the untimely call for a vote.

The Palestinian Authority vows it will request the vote anyway, in spite of intense US pressure to refrain.  If it happens, the call for a vote will, of course, be an embarrassment to US diplomacy.  But the statehood bid is untimely for a more important reason.  It is behind the times, out of step with the disintegration of the old 20th-century paradigm:  the narrative of political transformation that set “new statehood” in the context of the Western order.

According to that narrative, new statehood was two things at once:  it was a process of giving deserving peoples a place in the international order, but it was also seen by many on the left as a blow against the order – much like the community organizer’s practice of ensuring that plenty of irresponsible people are awarded the responsibility of the vote, and that they use it.

The quantity assumed to be constant in this narrative was the order itself.  The order was to be both railed at and battened on.  In some hazy future it might be “triumphed over,” but for the time being, there was no concrete plan – no Lenin-like competing idea for organization and governance – to supersede it.  Lenin’s idea collapsed from both the sword and its own cancerous inhumanity; it was discredited early on, and the world’s organized malcontents realized that, however emotionally satisfying Leninism was, their own aspirations needed the Western order to give them shape and meaning.  For careers of resentment and negativism to be sustainable, there has to be a large population of the productive and positive.

Under that paradigm, it made sense for malcontents to raid, harangue, and guilt-trip the productive, without ever producing an organized, sustainable result of their own.  In an analogy to the Western left’s posture, the hit-and-run guerrilla model of Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, and Hamas was the face of Islamism in the context of the 20th-century narrative.  Radicals were antagonists, not protagonists.  When radicals got in charge of a nation, as in North Korea or Cuba, Iran or Afghanistan, they were weird outliers; nobody wanted to be them. There was no viable, compelling model of either socialist utopia or Islamist statehood.

The new paradigm

The old paradigm is crumbling, however.  The principal factor in that is the squishy geopolitical profile of the United States.  It’s not just that the West is flailing and in debt over its head; it’s that there is today a rapidly declining expectation of order-keeping pushback from it.  That changes geopolitical and security assumptions for everyone.  It paves the way for a competing model of organization to arise.  And, inconveniently for the aspirants to Palestinian statehood, the competing model that is emerging is that of state Islamism.

Iran has given state Islamism a bad reputation, but Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey is – inch by inch – giving it a better one.  For the Arab Spring nations, it is increasingly likely that state Islamism in some form will be the organizing principle of their futures.  Islamism – political Islam – is making the shift right now between its old focus on a guerrilla and community-organizing profile against the West, and a new focus on gaining the tools and stature of state power.  Al Qaeda – the perpetual antagonist – is out; state Islamism – the seat of the protagonist – is in.

This changes the whole context of Palestinian statehood, and not just for Palestinians or Muslims but for everyone in the Eastern hemisphere.  According to the 20th-century narrative, Palestinian statehood was a blow against the Western order, a means of transforming it, and a way of giving “Palestine” a place in it.  Under the new narrative – still tentative, still emerging – there is a strong probability that Palestinian statehood will be an emblem of victory for state Islamism.  Regardless of whether it is intended so or not, circumstances have outrun the politics of the old paradigm.

Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood are competitors with Erdogan for leadership in the state-Islamism sweepstakes.  There is no semblance of unity among Muslims, or even among Middle Easterners, in this regard, and hence no one appointed to be the main patron of Palestinian statehood and carry it as a victory banner.  Unless someone is appointed to that role, a state of Palestine is likely to make the state of flux in the Middle East more intense and urgent.

Russians, Greeks, and the other peoples of Southeastern Europe see this much more clearly than Americans or West Europeans do.  Their security is directly affected by every new assumption of power, leadership, or influence in the Middle East.  They have national memories of life with the Ottoman Empire as a neighbor.  Whatever their sentiments were back in 1989, when many of them, secure within the US-dominated order, officially endorsed Palestinian statehood, they are not anxious today to see political victories for state Islamism (or, in a number of their cases, for nationalist insurgencies, of which these third-party nations have their share).

Reluctance for the transition?

What all this means is that quite a few of the nations in the UN – even Arab nations like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan; even nations that will vote for the unilateral Palestinian statehood initiative – are content to have the US to use our Security Council veto.  They’re not necessarily ready for everything to change.  With the Palestinian statehood question carrying new freight, and no clarity on who will benefit from it and whose ox it will most effectively gore, they may well prefer that the old paradigm linger just a bit longer.  The muted and distracted diplomatic posture of these nations on the Palestinian statehood initiative is a quiet testament to their ambivalence about it in a changing world.

Happily for them, it is the US that will take the heat.  Meanwhile, a small vignette in this over-stimulated drama is uniquely telling.  It hinges on the theme of activists that there is a one-sided slaughter of Palestinian children by the tanks and warplanes of a cruel, occupying state of Israel.

New meets old

In the US this month, activists are seeking to present the theme at the Museum of Children’s Art (MOCHA) in Oakland, as a rebuke to the complacent citizens of a monolithic West.  An anti-Israel group is sponsoring an exhibit of art supposedly executed by Palestinian children between the ages of 9 and 11 (see here as well).  MOCHA recently decided not to host the exhibit because of its political content, but the exhibit’s sponsors have expressed determination to get it on display “either inside or outside of MOCHA” (their emphasis) by their target date of 24 September.

Contrast this old-paradigm use of the tanks-and-planes theme with the new-paradigm use of it in Gaza earlier this week.  While Turkey’s Erdogan was making a high-profile visit to Egypt, Gazan children were arranged around a monument to the 2010 flotilla to invite Erdogan to visit Gaza.  Their young spokesman emitted this statement:

Speaking on behalf of the children, a Palestinian child Ahmed Fahri said that Israeli soldiers kept killing children of Gaza by their tanks and planes, adding that only one person [i.e., Erdogan] stood against it.

Fahri said that Erdogan was defending the children of Gaza, and they loved Erdogan very much, thus, schools, shops and children were named after Erdogan.

Erdogan has competitors; he will not find a path to regional or Islamist leadership without obstacles.  He may not be the one who achieves it.  His brand of state Islamism is focused less on sharia radicalism and more on traditional geopolitics and a neo-Ottoman idea.  But for now, he is riding the crest of the new paradigm – and we may be about to see that the old paradigm is not the one that “makes things happen” anymore.

J.E. Dyer’s articles have appeared at The Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions,” Patheos, The Weekly Standard online, and her own blog, The Optimistic Conservative.

1.  Iran’s nuclear reactor at Bushehr has finally been connected to the power grid.  A “pre-launch” ceremony has been scheduled for 12 September.  The important thing about this is that it means Russia has decided not to hold the Bushehr start-up in reserve any longer, as a bargaining chip with the various players in the Iranian nuclear drama.  (Note: Bushehr is not an important resource for the nuclear weapons program, but its fate is a signal of how seriously Iran takes the UN supervision and inspection regime.)   It’s been the Russians, dragging their feet for years, who have kept postponing the operationalization of the reactor.  They have now chosen to make the break.  Why?

2.  Turkey is rattling the naval saber around the Aegean Sea – and is planning to sign a strategic cooperation agreement with Egypt this month.  The agreement will reportedly include military cooperation.  Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who did an interestingly-timed turn in Somalia last month, plans to visit Egypt – and, reportedly, Gaza – in mid-September.  It’s no accident that Russia and Iran will be celebrating at Bushehr at the same time Erdogan is exercising Islamic leadership in post-Mubarak Egypt.  Russia is using Iran (as opposed to throwing in with her) to signal the Turks that Ankara doesn’t have a free hand and will meet resistance and counter-power in the region.

3.  Russia is motivated to do this by the same things that have reportedly put the Greek military on alert.  Turkey’s naval saber-rattling is both general and particular, and the particular focus is the plans of Cyprus to begin offshore gas exploration in the next several weeks.  Turkey has announced on multiple occasions that this exploration will be prevented.  Cypriots and Greeks are gravely concerned; it is being reported in Cyprus that Russia will send submarines to patrol Cypriot waters and defend the offshore commercial activities there.  (Not as unlikely as it was two years ago, and certainly not impossible.)

The more general purpose of the saber-rattling is regional power projection.  This week, the Turks used the pretext of the UN’s “Palmer report” on the 2010 flotilla incident – which acknowledged that Israel had not violated international law – to announce their new program of naval presence in the region.  Eerily (and pointedly) named the Barbaros Action Plan, the naval program will entail the following:

The Barbaros Action Plan, which aims to display the Turkish Navy’s presence in neighboring seas, now plans for Turkish maritime components to be in constant navigation not only in the Black Sea, the Aegean Sea and the Mediterranean but also in the Adriatic Sea, the Red Sea as well as the Indian Ocean.

In other words, Turkey plans to conduct naval security patrols of the waters of the former Ottoman Empire.  We’re way beyond pre-Pax Americana here; we’re in pre-Pax Britannica territory.

4.  Not unnaturally, Greece has just concluded a security cooperation agreement with Israel.  Those in the Eastern Mediterranean expect the offshore plans of Cyprus to become a flashpoint, and Israel is a cooperative partner in the Cyprus endeavor, having agreed with Cyprus in 2010 on a maritime boundary and a mutual recognition of seabed claims (and being an offshore gas driller herself).  Israel, Greece, and Cyprus have a common interest in both freedom of economic action off Cyprus and reining Turkey in across the board.

The Red Sea patrols in the Barbaros Plan are another new and special concern, one that can ultimately put in question the neutrality and quiescence of a key region of the NATO perimeter.  From the Red Sea, the Turkish navy – by far the biggest and best one in Israel’s immediate neighborhood – can flank Israel.

5.  The Eastern Med isn’t the only area where the old Pax Americana behaviors are behind us.  It cannot be emphasized enough that we have already entered a period in which the US is likely to have to struggle diplomatically for what we have been able to assume in the past.  A parade of West Europeans has been making up to Moscow this year, for example:

• ·         Britain and Russia agreed to significantly increased military cooperation in July, after decades of frosty relations.
• ·         In August, Britain lowered another barrier to cooperation with Russia, deciding – again, after years of pursuing the opposite policy – to allow Gazprom to enter the British energy market.  Gazprom, effectively an arm of Russian foreign policy, is meaner than a junkyard dog with its weaker investment targets, but the Brits are now willing to take on that problem.
• ·         France concluded the agreement this year to sell Russia Mistral-class, helicopter-carrying amphibious assault ships.  The burgeoning cooperation between France and Russia goes much further, however, including gas deals and negotiations on the privatization of Russian defense manufacturing by French defense giant Thales.
• ·         Germany contracted in June to build the Russian army a new combat training center (a move that evokes, for European and American observers, the secret training agreement in the 1920s and 1930s between Soviet Russia and Germany, which allowed the Germans to circumvent Treaty of Versailles restrictions).
• ·         Ireland’s president made the first visit of an Irish head of state to Russia in 2010.  In 2011, the Russian navy has sent a destroyer to visit Ireland, and the Irish navy has visited St. Petersburg.
• ·         In an event redolent of a golden pre-1914 twilight, Queen Margrethe II of Denmark sailed to St. Petersburg this week on her royal yacht, with a Danish navy escort, for a state visit to Russia.  The Queen visited Russia once before, in 1975; this time, she has a delegation of 100 businessmen in tow, and a lot of business to do.

6.  Central Europeans aren’t taking this trend lying down.  In May 2011, the Central European consortium called the Visegrad Group, which traces its modern history to the mid-1930s, decided to form its own military “battlegroup” under the command of Poland.  (The Visegrad Group consists of Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, and Slovakia.)  The land-warfare oriented Visegrad battlegroup will operate independently of NATO.

As Richard Cashman of the Henry Jackson Society implies, this development isn’t just indicative of a break-up of NATO-era security assumptions.  It’s in part a reversion to the power/security vision of a century ago, exemplified by the writings of British geopolitical thinker Halford Mackinder and his collaboration with Polish leader Josef Pilsudski in the interwar years.

7.  The essential feature of that older vision was the absence of a superpower on the model of the United States.  The US model matters, because Mackinder’s famous concept – modified and repopularized after WWII by Nicholas Spykman – envisioned the dominant power of the “World Island,” or Eurasia, being the dominant power of the globe.

The missing piece in Mackinder’s theory was the importance of naval power for a (relatively) easily-defended economic titan.  The US, her alliances, and her Navy accomplished after WWII what Mackinder did not envision:  the maritime encirclement of the World Island.  Even the British Empire had not achieved a true precedent for it.  The Soviet Union perceived the American encirclement feat with crystalline clarity, but throughout most of the Cold War, the US, NATO, and Japan persisted in thinking of themselves in Mackinder’s terms:  as a weaker hinterland of the “Heartland” (or Pivot Area – Central/Eastern Europe and the expanses of Russia and Central Asia), trying desperately to defend themselves.

Mackinder's map (from Wikimedia Commons)

(Note for aficionados of these ideas:  essentially, it was a successful US offensive posture with the strategy suggested by Spykman’s analysis that turned the World Island-Rimland construct on its head.   “Containment” was the shorthand defensive formulation of the Spykman-based strategy, but using containment as a basis for rollback was what succeeded in the end. Through alliances, and economic and naval power, the Rimland achieved dominance over the World Island, rather than being consigned to a permanent condition of strategic inferiority.)

No single theory is comprehensively explanatory, but identifying the present situation as a gradual collapse of the maritime encirclement of the World Island goes a long way.  With the absoluteness of US naval power receding, the dynamics predicted by the Mackinder vision are reemerging from long-term storage.

8.  In the West, the emerging drama off Turkey may turn into the first real post-Pax Americana showdown.  In the East, a showdown is all but underway.  As the fear of Chinese ambitions grows among Beijing’s neighbors, the naval powers of the region are beginning to assert a counter-influence.  Late last week, the news came out that an Indian warship, conducting a port visit in Vietnam in July, was confronted by the Chinese navy in international waters and subjected to peremptory demands.

(In an interesting sign of the times, INS Airavat was not in the Indian task group that met with unexpected failure in its attempt to hold a planned exercise with the Russian fleet in April.  Airavat was on a separate deployment.  These multiple naval deployments by the Indian navy to East Asia would have been unimaginable even three years ago.)

Japan, meanwhile, has just gained a new prime minister, whom observers expect to counter Chinese maritime claims – e.g., in the Senkaku Islands at the south of the Japanese archipelago – more “assertively.”

The potential maritime disorder affects arrangements on the continent, as indicated by Russia’s new charm offensive with the Koreas.  US ally Seoul agreed with Moscow in July to significantly increase military cooperation, including hosting Russian troops for training in South Korea.  A month later, the Russians were in North Korea, China’s client, conferring on stepped-up military cooperation and a program of joint exercises.  At virtually the same time, the Russians welcomed Kim Jong-Il for a rare visit.

9.  China gives Russia plenty to worry about in general, having established military exercise series in the last year with Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Turkey, deployed thousands of Chinese troops to the Gilgit-Baltistan region of Northern Pakistan, and continued construction of the Karakoram Highway into Pakistan, which would allow rapid military as well as commercial movement across the heart of Central Asia.

 But Asia isn’t the only part of Russia’s near abroad in Chinese sights.  In July 2011, China dispatched airborne troops for her first-ever military exercise with Belarus.  And in August, China and Ukraine agreed to expand military cooperation. Romania, which inaugurated a series of military exercises with China in 2009, agreed in July 2011 to boost naval cooperation with China.

10.  Every hour brings a new update.  Today – Tuesday, 6 September – China and New Zealand agreed to expand their military relations.

11.  One last gem crops up today.  In her continuing barrage of bizarre announcements, Iran has offered the new analysis that her territory is actually “14 percent larger than previously thought.”  What that means, only the days ahead will make clear.  It sounds like bad news for Iran’s neighbors.

Bottom line

The pressure of encirclement is being released on the World Island – a reasonable starting point for discussing what is going on.  The scramble for dominance of it is underway.

And the time for lament is past.  Too many things are changing; we cannot recapture the post-WWII, post-Cold War Pax Americana along its old outlines.  But neither will the world leave us alone, or retain its generally beneficial features – such as peaceful tradeways and uncoerced agreement to borders – without the use of American power.  No other aspirant to international leadership even has those things as objectives.  With the exception of the British Empire, no other aspirant ever has.  The old Pax Americana is gone; our task now is to get to work on the new one.

J.E. Dyer’s articles have appeared at The Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions,” Patheos, The Weekly Standard online, and her own blog, The Optimistic Conservative.

Turkey’s efforts around Iraq are multidimensional and aimed at more than merely suppressing the Kurdish separatist group PKK.  The activity that has been in the news in August, of course, is the bombing of Kurdish targets in northern Iraq.  Early in the August campaign, the Turks announced their decision to establish a more permanent military presence in northern Iraq, a move that will obviously affect strategic calculations in the region.

Baghdad has been largely silent about the incursions on Iraqi territory, although the Turkish ambassador was summoned last week to hear a complaint from the Iraqi foreign ministry.  Iraq’s position is difficult:  both Turkey and Iran are bound to be concerned about the Kurds’ use of northern Iraq as a redoubt for their different factional campaigns against Iraq’s neighbors.  Iran began attacking Kurdish targets across the border as early as July (see here and here), and with the emerging regional rivalry heating up between Ankara and Tehran, Turkey’s strategic interest in the real estate of northern Iraq was guaranteed to assume a more complex, and even a more urgent, character.  If Iraq can’t control the Kurds’ use of her territory, Nouri al-Maliki knows there is a limit to either neighbor’s willingness to refrain from intervention.

The US posture in the area is a question mark: the quality of our military power hasn’t changed, but the amount of it has, while our policy stance has grown flaccid.  Even two years ago, Turkey would have expected pushback from Washington if she proposed to establish permanent, significantly enlarged military bases in northern Iraq.  It is clear now that Erdogan is justified in assuming there will be no pushback.

The move in the south

In this context, Turkey’s latest move has about it the aura of wasting no time.  Down at the other end of Iraq, on the al-Faw peninsula, which runs down the west side of the Shatt-al-Arab waterway as it courses into the Persian Gulf, the Iraqis are finally on the verge of building the major new port they have been planning since 2005.  Kick-starting the investment consortium in late August 2011?  Three Turkish companies.

(Admin note: I can’t get Hot Air’s WordPress template to accept an image tonight, so if you’d like to view a map of the geo features mentioned below, please see this post at The Optimistic Conservative.)

It’s not any direct conflict with an Iranian commercial interest that makes this a pointed strategic move; it’s the location and the tactic.  The Shatt-al-Arab waterway, representing the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers as they empty into the Persian Gulf, has long been disputed between Iran and Iraq, for reasons that reach back centuries.  Iran occupied the al-Faw peninsula for a period of time during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s; Saddam’s nominal pretext for launching the war was his repudiation of the 1975 accord on the Shatt-al-Arab signed between Iraq and the Shah.

The area is one of Iran’s (and Iraq’s) most sensitive.  As the link above outlines, it is also the subject of a bitter dispute between Iraq and Kuwait over port development.  Kuwait is already building a rival port on Bubiyan Island, less than a mile off the al-Faw peninsula (and disputed with Iraq until a settlement was achievedon a UN demarcation line in 1994).  Iraq is strenuously opposed to Kuwait’s port plans; Kuwait naturally sees no reason to relinquish them.

The threats issued by Hizballah Kataib, the Hizballah group operating in Iraq, against Hyundai and other South Korean firms building the Kuwaiti port have suggested that Iran is opposed to Kuwait’s project as well.  Tension between Iran and Kuwait has been fed this year by Kuwait’s discovery in March of an Iranian spy ring inside her borders, along with Kuwaiti accusations that Iran is trespassing in Kuwait’s waters to conduct seismic exploration.  Kuwait closed ranks with Saudi Arabia on the issue of suppressing the protests in Bahrain during the Arab Spring, a policy that sat poorly with Iran, which backed some (not all) of the factions seeking to overthrow the Bahraini emir.

Iran’s general attitude toward the Shatt-al-Arab region is conveyed most effectively in this summary by a British analyst of Iranian political and military activities there.  Basically, it’s a throbbing vulnerability for Iran over which her leaders prefer to exert as much positive control as possible.  Development of a Kuwaiti port at its mouth promises to set up an uncontrollable condition, whereas promoting an Iraqi port there would enable Iran to keep a finger on what happens.  Since Iran has her own ports and free-trade zone on the Shatt-al-Arab, it has suited her interests well for Iraq’s port plans to languish, and for Kuwait’s to be subject to threat.

Given these factors, Erdogan’s approach is informative.  One option for stymieing Iran would have been simply backing the Kuwaiti port.  Already under construction, likely to be completed on time and operated well, it has much to recommend it.

But backing it would not be a way of supplanting Iran as a strategic patron of Iraq.  Nor would supporting the Iraqi port politically but remaining in the background.  With this month’s move, the Turks have done for the Iraqis’ port aspirations what the Iranians have been no help with: they have come up with money and organization.  From a Persian Gulf PR standpoint, the message of Turkish effectiveness is certainly amplified by her naval port visit to the Emirate of Abu Dhabi – the “first one in centuries” – in June 2011.

From Turkey’s perspective, it would be intolerable to have both Syria and Iraq acting under the sway of Iran.  There is a defensive reason for Turkey’s actions.  But two things must be noted.  One is that the catalyst for Ankara’s current activism is not a fear of growing Iranian strength.  Iran’s regional power arrangements are actually under threat from multiple sources at the moment, and much of her strategy is being executed in reactionary mode, not from confident assertiveness.  What Turkey sees is opportunity, and what created it is the disorder and passivity of US policy.  There is a vacuum, and Erdogan is filling it.

Meanwhile, back in the West: “We were here, are here, and will always be here”

The second observation is that Turkey containing Iran isn’t likely to turn out a lot better than Hitler containing Stalin.  It sounds clever, but its hazards outweigh the potential benefits.  Sooner or later, Erdogan’s objectives are going to collide with the interests of others in the Middle East, with those of NATO, and with at least one of the great powers of Asia.

One of the early flashpoints may be over on Turkey’s other flank, in the Balkans, where Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu helped Bosnian Muslims celebrate Eid in Sarajevo on 30 August.  In language guaranteed to alarm Bosnia’s non-Muslim population, Davutoglu and the Grand Mufti pretty much laid it on the table:

Grand Mufti Mustafa Ceric welcomed Davutoğlu, telling worshippers that “today is a day we waited for centuries” in Sarajevo. “Today is a day to cherish because the Turkish foreign minister is with us,” he said.

Davutoğlu said Ceric’s sermon was “emotional” and added: “We were here, are here and we will always be here.”

Ceric further commended Davutoğlu after his sermon at the mosque, saying “Allah created him to make history.” Calling Davutoğlu’s Eid prayer at Gazi Husrev Bey Mosque a “historic moment,” Ceric said it symbolized the “rebirth of a new politics and new realities in the Balkans, particularly in Bosnia and Herzegovina.”

Davutoğlu said after the prayer that he was honored to be in Sarajevo, calling the city as “home.” He said: “In our traditions, we celebrate Eid at home. This is what I am doing, I celebrate the Eid with my family in Sarajevo. Bosnia is our home and Bosnians are our family members.”

As Today’s Zaman demurely puts it, however:

Davutoğlu rejected [the] “neo-Ottoman” label for his government’s foreign policy and said such a label stemmed from the uneasiness some have felt in the face of Turkey’s growing influence in the region.

J.E. Dyer’s articles have appeared at The Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions,” Patheos, The Weekly Standard online, and her own blog, The Optimistic Conservative.

Erdogan’s in Somalia.  He arrived on Friday.  Officially, he is representing Turkey and the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) in recognizing the plight of Somalia’s starving people and arranging for aid.  But that’s not as straightforward as it might seem.  The UN, many individual nations like the US, and various global charities are providing enormous amounts of aid to Somalia – and so is Iran.  It’s in part because of the latter connection that Erdogan has had this sudden fit of humanitarianism.

Iran has been cultivating links in the Horn of Africa for some years now, and regional reporting indicates that Tehran’s support for the Al-Shabaab insurgency in Somalia, brokered through the Afewerki regime in Eritrea, was intensifying through the summer.  Al-Shabaab, meanwhile, has been blocking the distribution of aid from the World Food Program and other non-Muslim sources, while being picky about which Muslim aid it allows through.  Al-Shabaab controls only part of Somalia, but the impact is still significant (especially when combined with the endemic theft and resale of donated goods).

Erdogan’s oddly timed trip comes in the wake of an OIC meeting at which he reportedly addressed his fellow Islamic leaders on the topic of Western arrogance and the failures of capitalism in relation to the Somali famine (this in spite of the literal billions in aid provided by Western governments and private organizations).

But it also comes at the end of a crucial two-week period that started with Al-Shabaab announcing a withdrawal from Mogadishu, and continued with an unprecedented level of success against the insurgency by African Union troops deployed in the AMISOM mission.  It is too soon to say that Al-Shabaab is “defeated,” but the momentum has turned against it – and hence against a strategic line of effort being prosecuted by Iran.

The timing of Erdogan’s visit comes off as doing a victory lap for the success of third parties (the African Union and the US), as well as putting down a stake where Iran has just suffered a reversal.  The location is geographically significant, as it splits the area of the Great Crossroads in which Iran has been diligently pursuing influence.  Eritrea and Sudan lie to the northwest, and Yemen, where Iran supports the Houthi rebels, to the northeast across the Gulf of Aden.  (The Horn of Africa is also, of course, a geostrategic hinge point in its own right.)

As indicated in the last link (and in an earlier one from my 15 August post), regional observers are calling Iran’s Horn of Africa/Yemen strategy her “back-up plan” for when the Assad regime falls in Syria.  Erdogan showing up right smack dab in the middle of it, just in time to associate himself with the glory of the US-AMISOM surge against Al-Shabaab – and perhaps seek to demonstrate that he can get aid delivered where others couldn’t – has all the air of exploiting an opportunity.

Consider what else is going on.  Erdogan’s own troops have mounted an assault in northern Iraq after the killing of dozens of Turkish soldiers by the Kurdish PKK insurgency.  The Turkish national security council decided on Friday to turn surveillance outposts in northern Iraq into support bases, in order to sustain continuous operations there – a move Iraq is likely to object to.  The internal situation in Syria becomes more precarious by the hour; thousands of refugees have flooded Turkey, and although Ankara denies imposing a “buffer zone” along the border, reports that precautionary planning is underway are undoubtedly true.

To the south, meanwhile, a guerrilla invasion of Israel has been mounted through Egypt, and Hamas has launched a deadly rocket assault.  An Israeli force pursuing the terrorist raiders killed five Egyptian soldiers, prompting the Egyptian government to announce – and then deny – that it had recalled its ambassador to Israel.

With all these shooting matches going on right in his neighborhood, Erdogan’s heart and vision are with the regional power situation: the larger rivalry with Iran.  The significance of position in this rivalry is evident in his rush to parade past cheering crowds in Somalia when the opportunity suddenly presented itself (not to mention prompting sycophantic opinion pieces in Turkey, with of course, the obligatory Ottoman historical references).  Erdogan is driving down the center of Iran’s once-secondary axis of regional projection.

Michael Ledeen speculates at Pajamas today that if it looks like war – walks and talks like war – we might want to sit up and think about what’s going on.  His instincts are in the right place, I think.  The “next war” isn’t going to start and end like World War II, or even like the Cold War.  But regimes will change, along with alliances and alignments, and schemes of regional order and balances of regional power.

The US at the moment is perilously close to being used for the purposes of others, like a dying and dithering empire.  In spite of the significance of the setback for Al-Shabaab in Somalia, to everything from the piracy problem to dominance in the Middle East, the US is nowhere to be seen in the strategic aftermath of this tactical victory.  We have no idea what to do with it.  But Erdogan does.

J.E. Dyer’s articles have appeared at The Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions,” Patheos, The Weekly Standard online, and her own blog, The Optimistic Conservative.

More good news for a Monday:  Turkey’s president, Abdullah Gul (the head of state, as opposed to Prime Minister Erdogan, the head of government), sent Syria’s Bashar al-Assad a letter last week.  In it, he warned that if Assad continues on his current path – making war on his people, joined at the hip with Iran – he can no longer count on Turkey’s friendship.  According to a Turkish press interview cited by Haaretz, Turkish officials are now open to the possibility of participating in a coalition military intervention in Syria, something Turkey has not been openly in favor of before.

Iran has lost no time in delivering a riposte.  Iran will expand and update the air base at Latakia (adjacent to a naval base on the Syrian coast, and formerly used by the Soviet Union) in order to facilitate weapons shipments to Syria.  Turkey has stopped at least two weapons shipments through Turkish territory from Iran to Syria this year, and the Israeli navy – or possibly a NATO navy – would prevent any attempted deliveries by commercial shipping.  (Iran violates UN sanctions by exporting arms, regardless of who they’re going to.)

Iran’s logistic and strategic outreach

An air base alone would be of little use to Iran and Syria, unless Iran can route planes over Iraq.  If that isn’t possible, the air base at Latakia buys Tehran and the Assad regime little, at least in the near future.  The planes have to approach Latakia somehow, and if they can’t go through Turkey, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, or Jordan, there is no feasible direct route.

Nor would any country on the Mediterranean side knowingly allow a planeload of Iranian weapons to use its air bases as a waypoint.  Few if any potential Asian partners would be willing to allow that use for their air bases.  Iran has dealt in third- and fourth-party cut-outs for years (e.g., the recent attempt to route arms clandestinely through Nigeria), but intelligence agencies are fully alerted to Iranian tactics.

But might Iraq allow Iranian aircraft to transit her airspace en route Syria?  Observers in the Middle East are starting to see that as very possible.  The news site Iran Focus ties Nouri al-Maliki’s diplomatic support of the Assad regime to the fact that he “owes his hold on power to Tehran” – a reference to his (relatively enthusiastic) accommodation with Iran-backed Shia elements in Iraq.

Some level of friendliness is to be expected, of course, between neighbors who don’t want to be at each other’s throats.  Regional observers see more than that in Iran-Iraq relations, however.   In an editorial taking it for granted that Assad’s days are numbered, UAE’s The National calls the growing Iran-Iraq rapprochement “Iran’s back-up plan,” and links it with recent reports that Iran has ramped up covert support to the Shia Houthi rebels in western Yemen, whose activities create instability for the governments in both Sana’a and neighboring Saudi Arabia.

There may be a certain level of wishful thinking in The National’s dismissive attitude toward Assad.  Iran’s entrenchment in Syria is of a different order from her efforts in Bahrain, and will not be defeated as easily as in the small Persian Gulf nation.  But the perception that Iran is investing in her hold over Iraq is widespread in the region – and it’s an investment with multiple uses.  Iran doesn’t just want to retain her hold in Syria; she needs to block Turkey, and the urgency of that requirement has just increased significantly.

Iran won’t go quietly from Syria.  The air base, with an approach route through Iraq, is probably her preferred option for delivering arms.  But a fallback would be sending naval supply ships, with warship escorts, to deliver arms in Latakia.  That option would require would-be sanctions enforcers to challenge Iranian ships of war rather than commercial cargo vessels, and potentially to commit an act of war to stop the delivery.

Russia’s diplomatic gambit

Another important factor is Russia.  With the implication that Turkey will be willing to join a military intervention in Syria, Ankara has effectively broken ranks with Russia.  Russia has been unalterably opposed to that option, and is almost certain to remain so.  Besides opposing the West’s armed endorsement of revolts against Russian clients (in both Libya and Syria), Russia is concerned about both losing her naval base in Tartus and seeing Syria incorporated in an alliance with Turkey.

So it is interesting that as the Syrian navy pounds civilians on the coast, Turkey opens the door to armed intervention, and the US demands that Russia stop selling arms to the Assad regime, Moscow’s new push this week is to get everyone back to the table with Iran to haggle over the Iranian  nuclear program.

It’s a trademark Russian tactic, to get negotiations going so that various forms of “linkage” can be brought to bear.  Turkey, in her approach to Syria, is being comparatively dismissive of Russia, largely because there is more profit in proposing to participate in a Western effort in Syria – if the West can be egged into it.  But Russia can get back in the game, if negotiations with Iran can be made a forum for introducing – or leveraging – other regional issues, as either incentives or threats.  The Iranian nuclear problem is one the other P5+1 will find hard to ignore, as well as being a diplomatic issue for which Russia is guaranteed a seat at the table.

It’s a gambit, at any rate, and a fairly intelligent one.  The wild card is the United States.  If the Obama administration had a discernible vision for regional relations with a post-Assad, post-Iranian-client Syria, that would be one thing.  But it doesn’t, and that’s why the governing dynamic in the situation is the rivalry for Syria between Iran and Turkey.  If the US takes Russia up on the renewal of negotiations with Iran, that will prolong, for at least a while, the appearance that the conventions of the old Pax Americana are still in force.  It would not be a bad thing to be at the table with Russia, Iran, China, and our major European allies right now – it’s certainly better than laying out a red carpet for a Turkish military deployment into Syria.  Iran probably sees that as well.

How the US responds to the Russian proposal will be a key test of the Obama administration’s willingness to bolster the conventions that attend the global status quo.  Failing the test would constitute a true “reset,” not only of our relations with Russia but of our stature with the rest of the world.  We can hope that the conventional diplomatic thinkers at State and NSC win out over the advocates of non-hostile kinetic military action.  Neither will guarantee protection of the suffering Syrian people from their government – but the consequences of the NHKMA option in Syria would be exponentially worse than in Libya.

J.E. Dyer’s articles have appeared at The Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions,” Patheos, The Weekly Standard online, and her own blog, The Optimistic Conservative.

ABC features the Obama administration response as if – well, as if it deserves featuring:

As China’s first aircraft carrier takes to the open seas today for its inaugural sea trials, the U.S. government directed a pointed question at the Chinese military: Why would you need a warship like that?

“We would welcome any kind of explanation that China would like to give for needing this kind of equipment,” U.S. State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland told reporters today. “We have had concerns for some time and we’ve been quite open with them with regard to the lack of transparency from China regarding its power projection and its lack of access and denial of capabilities.” …

“We are prepared to be extremely transparent with regard to U.S. military positions and equipment, and we’d like to have a reciprocal relationship with China, and that’s what our presidents have said we ought to aspire to,” Nuland said. “Transparency in itself is a confidence builder between nations.”

That’ll fix their wagon, over there in Beijing.  Of course, the hazard of demanding an answer to a question is that you may get one.  The Channel News Asia website today quotes a piece from the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Daily, the state-run military news outlet, in which the author says the carrier should be used to “handle territorial disputes”:

“Why did we build it if we don’t have the courage and willingness to use the aircraft carrier to handle territorial disputes?” he asked in the article.

“It is reasonable to use the aircraft carrier or other warships to handle disputes if there is any need.

“The reason why we built a carrier is to safeguard China’s maritime rights and interests more efficiently. We will be more confident and have more determination to defend our territorial integrity after we have carriers.”

A pointed question for the US administration would be: What did they think China’s purpose was in launching an aircraft carrier?  Does it really require explanation?  Why do nations usually put aircraft carriers in service?  (China didn’t actually build this one; the Russians did.  China finished it and fitted it out with combat systems.)

Another pointed question would be:  What obligation could China possibly have to account to the US for why she has put a carrier in her fleet?  China’s not an ally and is bound by no treaty requirement to explain the introduction of new aircraft carriers.  Why ask a question that can’t put China on the spot and only invites a destabilizing answer?

The PLA Daily piece is being linked fervently all over Asia.  In the wake of multiple warnings from Beijing to the rival maritime claimants in the South China Sea (most recent here), the PLA Daily statement about the purpose of the aircraft carrier looks pretty, well, pointed.

The new carrier, which according to some reports will be named Shi Lang, has just begun sea trials.  It still needs to conduct operational testing of all kinds, and integrate its airwing, before it is ready for combat deployments.  China officially debuted the J-15 strike-fighter that will form the core of the airwing earlier this year; the first photos of the prototype emerged in 2009-10, so it’s a new aircraft for the Chinese military and is still being shaken out itself.  The J-15 is based on the Russian Su-33, the follow-on to the Su-27 designed for the Admiral Kuznetsov-class ski-jump aircraft carrier.  (Russia has Admiral Kuznetsov in service; China’s new carrier is the ex-Varyag, the other unit of the class.)

A full combat complement for the airwing will probably be three squadrons of J-15s, or about 33 aircraft, plus support helicopters.  China is reportedly developing a fixed-wing air control and early warning (AEW) aircraft, to fill the role of the US E-2C Hawkeye, and if the ex-Varyag were to carry such an aircraft, that would mean fewer J-15s, as there is a capacity limit for airwing parking.  Integration of a fixed-wing, carrier-based AEW airframe may be delayed to the inauguration of the Chinese-designed, indigenously built aircraft carrier.

What these various details mean is that China will not be deploying a combat-ready aircraft carrier tomorrow.  Although the Chinese have sped up their typical timeline for operationalizing new capabilities, I would guess the ex-Varyag won’t be in combat service for at least another 15-18 months, and its capabilities will be limited.

That said, the “problem-set” for operationalizing ex-Varyag is of a different scope from that of the path to combat readiness for a US carrier.  The ex-Varyag will never have the capabilities of its US counterparts; its size and other limitations prevent that.  But it doesn’t have to have those capabilities to be a game-changer in Southeast Asia.  Much of what a US carrier totes with it everywhere – making it the famous “four and a half acres of sovereign US territory” – China can provide separately to the maritime battlespace from shore.  Distances are short in the South China Sea, and the Chinese build-up there huge.  China doesn’t need this carrier to attack and subjugate Taiwan, and couldn’t use it to project power at great distances – but it’s the ideal platform to “handle territorial disputes” with the Philippines or Vietnam.

It turns out there are stupid questions.  The Obama administration just asked one.  The good news is that there may be at least a reason, if not an excuse, for the apparent confusion.  The Chinese launched two aircraft carriers this week:  the other one is a luxury hotel in Tianjin, on the Yellow Sea coast in northern China.  The former-Soviet carrier Kiev, which China bought in 1996 to use as a recreational facility, has undergone a multi-million-dollar transformation into a luxury destination for the exotic-travel connoisseur.  There are reportedly five presidential suites, along with cheaper accommodations.  Room rates haven’t been published yet, but you can tour the Binhai Military Theme Park for a ticket cost of 110 yuan, or about $17 US.

China's other aircraft carrier; photo Xinhuanet

For naval/carrier buffs, excellent pictorial history of ex-Varyag here.

J.E. Dyer’s articles have appeared at The Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions,” Patheos, The Weekly Standard online, and her own blog, The Optimistic Conservative.

You’ve got to feel for Cyprus.  The island starts out divided between Greek Cyprus and “Turkish Northern Cyprus,” an entity created by a Turkish armed invasion in 1974 and recognized by, well, Turkey.  With her historical Greek roots, Greek Cyprus – an independent nation – has extensive exposure to Greek government bonds, and has been fighting a rearguard action throughout 2011 to prevent a faster downgrading of Cypriot public debt.  (Some US states now face a somewhat similar potential domino effect from the downgrading of US debt.)

Arms and the explosion

Back in January 2009, Cyprus was the unfortunate flag state of the M/V Monchegorsk, chartered by Iran to transport arms to Syria in violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1747.  Cyprus lies off Syria’s coast, and wanted nothing to do with confiscating the Assad regime’s prohibited arms delivery.  But Cyprus ended up – under tremendous pressure – accepting the confiscated cargo: 98 containers of arms and explosives.  (Sprightly account of the history on this here.)

On 11 July 2011, the arms shipment, which had been held without further processing under a makeshift structure at a Cypriot naval base for over two years, found itself in the path of a summer fire.  Exploding, it killed 13 people, including the chief of the Cypriot navy, and destroyed the electric power plant that provided 53% of the power used by Greek Cyprus.  The loss of power has put Cyprus in an economic tailspin.  Moody’s downgraded Cypriot debt to just above junk status in late July, making it likely that EU member (and Eurozone participant) Cyprus would at some point seek a bailout along with Greece, Portugal, and Ireland.

Cypriots, blaming the government of old-style leftist Demetris Cristiofas (and, without electric power, having little else to do), have been flooding the streets in protest.  Cristiofas’ parliamentary coalition was split when its major ally (the centrist Democratic Party) abruptly pulled out on Wednesday 3 August.  Cristiofas holds the office of president and will not face the voters again until 2013, but the loss of his coalition means the government will be paralyzed on contentious issues.  He appointed a new cabinet on Friday, but was unable to bring in any new ministers from his former ally, the Democratic Party.  Nevertheless, his new finance minister put a brave face on things, asserting that “there is no issue at the moment” of Cyprus requesting a Eurozone bailout.

Gas and Turkey

This may well be due in large part to Cyprus’ determination to forge ahead with offshore gas drilling.  The government in Nicosia has put the word out repeatedly over the last couple of weeks that it expects drilling off the southern coast to start on (or before) 1 October.  Cyprus has been moving smartly to explore and get drilling underway since concluding a maritime boundary agreement with Israel in 2010.

USGS map of Levant Basin oil/gas survey area

But Turkey is unalterably opposed to this course.  Turkey’s position is that, having invaded Cyprus and established a Turkish entity there which no one else recognizes, she is entitled to forestall all activity in the Cypriot economic exclusion zone (EEZ) until the status of Cyprus is worked out through negotiation.

That won’t be happening any time soon.  On 19 July, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced a significant change in the country’s negotiating stance:

The Turkish Prime Minister has sent a thunderbolt to the United Nations and leaders of Cyprus by announcing that his country is no longer prepared to accept the concessions it has agreed to in order to help with the reunification of Cyprus in line with a UN plan back in 2004.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the Turkish side will accept nothing short of recognition of a two-state solution on the island, effectively meaning if the current round of UN sponsored talks fail Turkey will likely seek international recognition for the break-away state.

The “two-state solution” thing is certainly going around (and that’s a whole other post).  But in the wake of this “thunderbolt” from Erdogan, Cristiofas pulled out of the UN-sponsored negotiation meeting scheduled for Friday, 5 August, without indicating a date on which he would be prepared to resume negotiations.   Certainly his governing-coalition woes are a key reason for the pull-out, but they are extremely unlikely to be the only reason.  It is not clear what options Cyprus has now, with the Erdogan government renouncing the previous basis for negotiations, and determined not on reunification of the island, but on a two-state solution.  Cristiofas cannot feel that there is much to say to Turkey right now.

But 1 October is less than 8 weeks away.  Turkey expresses continued determination to prevent a drilling start, and for implied threats of that kind there is a history.  The Turkish navy has harassed exploration vessels operating in the Cypriot and Greek EEZs before – to the point of preventing their activities.  In mid-November 2008, a Turkish warship prevented a Norwegian survey vessel from operating off the southern coast of Cyprus.  In March of 2011, a Turkish warship interfered with an Italian vessel in the Greek EEZ off Crete, which had Athens’ permission to survey the seabed for a communications cable to be laid between Italy and Israel.  (See here for an account of an escalation with Greece in 2010, via a NOTAM duel and Turkish fighter patrols over a new undersea oil/gas find.)

Greece has taken note of a pointed statement by Erdogan at a 2011 naval conference in Ankara:

We want a navy to dominate the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean, and also stand before the Russian Black Sea Fleet.

Nothing is happening in isolation in the Eastern Mediterranean, and Cyprus, geographically and politically, is in the middle of it all.  The Arab Spring has upset one set of assumptions, putting Syria (and Egypt) in play.  The perennial security concerns of the major nations – Russia, Greece, Turkey – are dictated by geography and history: if Syria is in play, that causes strategic discomfort for the other big nations.  Russia’s concern is particularly acute because Turkey lies across her maritime path out of the Black Sea, and on the other side of the restive, largely Muslim Caucasus.  Turkey asserting a new, peculiarly Turkish realm of influence (e.g., by pilfering Syria as a client from Iran) would regenerate an Ottoman-like vulnerability on Russia’s southern flank.

Geography and geostrategy

The facts of geo-history combine with undersea resources to make Cyprus a strategic prize in the Eastern Mediterranean.  Considered in the light of Erdogan’s recent electoral victory, his suppression of internal checks on his power, and his various statements indicating neo-Ottoman aspirations, the July 2011 about-face on Cyprus policy comes off as a clear determination to keep Turkey in absolute control of at least part of Cyprus.  There are two geographic reasons for this:  Cyprus’ proximity to the Levant Basin oil and gas reserves, and Cyprus’ relation to the coast of Syria.  Basically, Cyprus commands the Syrian coast.  Holding Cyprus and being able to fortify it is a means of holding Syria at risk from the sea.

Eastern Mediterranean region

That would come in handy if either Russia or Iran got in a position in Syria to project power from the Syrian coast.  It’s a blocking move on Turkey’s part as much as anything.  Iran, fighting hard just to keep the Assad regime in power (see here and here), is somewhat distracted at the moment, but Russia has a very long historic and geostrategic vista of security concerns about formerly-Ottoman Turkey, the Aegean, and the Black Sea.  That is why Russia has sought to maintain at least one Mediterranean base whenever possible over the last two-plus centuries, to be able to flank her Black Sea neighbors and influence conditions in the Mediterranean when necessary.

Cyprus has become uniquely vulnerable at a uniquely unstable time.  It doesn’t all boil down to oil and gas:  Americans are almost the only people on earth who don’t have to think 24/7 about geography as a key component of their security, and we foolishly dismiss the geographic security orientation of other nations, supposing that everything is “about” either oil or ideology.  But Russia can very easily be held at risk by Turkey because of geography, and the more Ottoman-sounding Erdogan’s rhetoric and actions are, the more Russia will worry about that and take steps to avert it.  Maneuvering over Cyprus because of her relative location is as high a priority as anything else.

The unreliability of US power contributes to the uneasy mindset of various actors around the “Great Crossroads” of Europe, Asia, and Africa.  The EU, the US, and our collective defense organization (NATO) are failing in Libya and looking tired and dispirited in Afghanistan.  It is less and less unthinkable that Turkey will render the UN process in Cyprus moot because she has no intention of giving up her free hand in Northern Cyprus – and that she will add new offensive capabilities to the 30,000 troops she has occupying the island.

Unfortunately, the stage is set for Cyprus to matter a great deal.  If having a naval base in Syria becomes untenable for Russia, having the use of bases in Greece – perhaps even in Greek Cyprus – is not out of the question.  So much has the Pax Americana faded that Britain, France, and Italy would be likely to quietly welcome such a development, rather than regarding it with suspicion and alarm.

Naval postures

If Turkey’s posture in the Eastern Med seems to come off somewhat like China’s in the waters of East Asia, it should not be surprising that the two nations, which have conducted unprecedented military exercises together over the last year, have also been conducting unprecedented naval task force deployments to distant seas.  In 2010, China, for the first time ever, sent an operational naval task force to the Mediterranean for a series of port visits.  Turkey, for the first time since Ottoman days (i.e., World War I), deployed a task force for a non-NATO “patrol” of the Mediterranean.

This summer, Turkey sent a four-ship naval task force to the Indian Ocean and East Asia.  Turkey (like China) has maintained a presence in the antipiracy operations off Somalia, but this summer’s deployment has so far entailed port visits in Oman, Abu Dhabi (UAE – “for the first time in centuries”), India, Pakistan, Malaysia, Indonesia, China, and Japan.

J.E. Dyer’s articles have appeared at The Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions,” Patheos, The Weekly Standard online, and her own blog, The Optimistic Conservative.

Omri Ceren has done an excellent and thorough treatment at Commentary this week of how bad things could get with Syria.  Scenarios in which armed conflict and the use of WMD affect not just Israel but the entire region are not out of the question.  Yet nothing about the current unstable situation has been inevitable.  As Omri says:

[L]ooking the other way while lunatics arm themselves, make alliances and organize together for war is generally not a good way to ensure long-term stability. The potential consequences of Syria’s free fall are terrifying examples of just how counter-productive that strategy may turn out to be.

Syria may indeed be a key test of what bad consequences actually amount to in our post-modern world.  I am not convinced that policy errors like those of the 1930s are going to lead today to a conflict like World War II, one in which borders are crossed by national armies and conventional battles mark important turning points.  Our future may hold something more like an updated cold war, one with multiple competitors vying to converge on territory by “asymmetric” means – and in the process enslaving peoples.

One of the factors at work here is peculiar to Syria.  Libya’s geographic position consigns her to second-tier geostrategic significance (at least while the Mediterranean is solidly in NATO hands), but Syria lies at the junction of Europe, Asia, and Africa:  adjacent to Turkey; on the Mediterranean; on the other side of Turkey (from Russia’s perspective) from the Turkish Straits; sharing a border with Israel; up the coast from the Suez Canal.  Syria’s basic condition hasn’t changed for decades, and for the most part, that has been just fine with everyone else – because a change in Syria’s condition will necessitate a reevaluation of the alignments of all others in the region, as well as their patrons.

Of all the nations with a vested interest in the outcome in Syria, including the US, I judge Turkey to be the only one at the moment whose leadership has an actual vision for life after the Tehran-Damascus axis.  That vision, of course, involves a government of Syria that swings its principal orientation to Turkey.  (Iran and other Asian observers are on the qui vive for this development.  See here also.)  I don’t think Erdogan’s thinking is running in a purely Ottoman, acquisitive channel here; he is equally concerned with the evils for Turkey of a radical regime installed next door by Arabist elements of the Muslim Brotherhood.  But aside from purely defensive considerations, the following outcomes would interfere with Erdogan’s aspirations for regional and Islamic leadership:  Syria remaining a client of an increasingly demented Iran, or Syria governed by a spanking new radical Salafist regime.

Russia won’t stand idly by, however, and let Turkey create a new Islamic partnership at the entrance to the Black Sea.  Russia is as interested in Syria’s independence from Turkey as she is in that of the Balkan nations.  The Iran-Syria connection, on the other hand, doesn’t present as urgent a problem for Russia, and even has advantages.  The most important thing for Moscow, however, is Russia’s own relationship with Syria, which provides her sole foothold in the Levant and a port on the Mediterranean.

Neither Russia nor Turkey is going to simply allow Syria to start a war with Israel.  For one thing, they aren’t prepared today to profit from the consequences of such a war.  Both will also jockey – separately – to prevent the independent emergence of a radical Islamist regime.  Russia and Turkey have separate ends, but neither is served by uncontrolled eruptions from Syria.

Nor are they served by a NATO intervention.  Russia continues to block a UN Security Council resolution on Syria because Syria is a Russian client in Russia’s near abroad, and matters to Russian security directly and materially.  Syria’s significance to Russia is substantially more important than Libya’s.  If holding onto Assad is simply not an option, Russia is likely to seek a way to play Turkey and Iran off each other, and be in the center seat for the process of midwifing a new normal for Syria.  Moscow doesn’t want NATO complicating that option with a non-hostile kinetic military action – or, for that matter, enforcement of a unified UN position on sanctions.

In the absence of a new, independent regime established by an extremely well organized and brutal insurgency, Syria won’t have freedom of action outside her borders in the coming months.  She will remain beholden to, and constrained by, one patron and/or another.  That doesn’t mean no one else needs to worry about what Syria might do, but it does mean that Syria isn’t the only nation to watch.  Sorting out Syria is a crisis point in which stakeholders are determined not to lose.

Americans have become accustomed to nothing happening without the strategic involvement of the United States.  But what seems normal to today’s generations has been only a brief, shining moment in the march of history.  It is much more normal, from a historical perspective, for nations like Turkey and Russia to – shall we say – maneuver vigorously to affect outcomes in a nation like Syria.  Russia and Turkey may have been content to maneuver at a low level – within limits – against the status quo maintained by the US, but the “status quo maintained by the US” is a baseline condition that is no longer reliable.  Other nations are going to start enforcing what they want, wherever they can.  Syria’s fate – and that of her suffering people – may well be one of the first examples.

J.E. Dyer’s articles have appeared at The Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions,” Patheos, The Weekly Standard online, and her own blog, The Optimistic Conservative.

Kim Zigfeld at Pajamas picks up on a position assumed by the Obama administration on a Senate bill that would condemn Russian officials complicit in the torture and death of a rights lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky.  The bill, sponsored by John McCain and Benjamin Cardin (D-MD), would deny US visas to a list of Russian officials and freeze their assets in America.  Equally important, it would call attention to what those officials have done, and to the pattern of threats, intimidation, and even homicidal brutality wielded by the Russian government against whistle-blowers.

The Russians have warned the Obama administration about what will happen if the Senate goes through with the McCain-Cardin bill.  And the Obama State Department has in turn conveyed that warning to the Senate:

Senior Russian government officials have warned us that they will respond asymmetrically if this legislation passes. Their argument is that we cannot expect them to be our partner in supporting sanctions against countries like Iran, North Korea, and Libya, and sanction them at the same time. Russian officials have said that other areas of bilateral cooperation, including on transit to Afghanistan, could be jeopardized if this legislation passes.

The administration revealed yesterday that it has “quietly” placed a number of Russian officials on a no-visa list – “without,” as the New York Times delicately puts it, “official notification to the Russians.” Faithfully reporting the situation according to the administration’s talking points, the Times continues:

A State Department memo laid out the visa ban, which was first reported by The Washington Post. The document was sent last week to senators who have been pushing for far more stringent measures. Their provisions would not only deny American entry to Russian officials linked to the case of the lawyer, Sergei L. Magnitsky, but also freeze their American assets. At least 19 senators are sponsoring the bill, including Benjamin L. Cardin, Democrat of Maryland, and John McCain, Republican of Arizona.

The measure would apply as well to officials implicated in the shooting deaths of Natalia Estemirova, a human rights worker killed in the North Caucasus in 2009, and Anna Politkovskaya, a crusading journalist killed at the entry to her Moscow apartment in 2006.

The State Department’s memo argued against such sweeping measures, saying they might undermine Mr. Obama’s policy of reset with Moscow and that the Russians had threatened retaliation that could harm American interests around the world.

Particularly ineffable is NYT’s characterization of the overall episode:

The Obama administration has disclosed one of its sharpest policy responses to Russian human rights abuses, telling American lawmakers that dozens of Russian officials have been quietly barred from the United States…

Skeptics can be pardoned for doubting the “sharpness” of a policy implemented “without official notification” to the Russians.  Even Jimmy Carter displayed more fortitude in standing up for human rights.

When it comes to US ally Israel, however, the Obama State Department is prepared to eschew euphemism and deal in actual money.  Haaretz got hold of two internal State Department reports in which the US delegation in Israel is judged to have done poorly at the task of convincing the Israeli public about Obama’s policies.  That these reports found their way to Haaretz looks like a story in itself; the administration comes off in them as peevish and ultimately spiteful, because the upshot of the internal assessment is that the US should terminate our program of guaranteeing loans to Israel.

Does the skepticism of the Israeli public about the Obama administration justify terminating a loan-guarantee program?  The main context in which the connection would be obvious is that of Chicago politics.  (Or Putin-style Russian politics, for that matter.)  Relevant passages from the Haaretz story:

“A fragile Israeli coalition government leans toward the views of its members from the nationalist and religious right, creating a challenge for diplomats seeking to build support for U.S. policies,” the report says….

The reports portray a problematic picture of the missions’ performance in Israel.

The Tel Aviv embassy faces intense challenges, generated by Israel’s current government, negative public opinion toward President Obama, a sensitive political environment and a vibrant media scene, the report says.

It finds that the embassy’s annual public relations budget, intended to influence public opinion in Israel, is about $7 million a year, or roughly NIS 25 million.

Despite its diplomatic wording, the report implies the Tel Aviv embassy has totally failed in its public relations efforts during the Obama term. “Much of the Israeli public is suspicious of U.S. efforts to promote negotiations aimed at establishing an independent Palestinian state,” it says. “The lively and fractious press often misinterprets American policies.”

Israel can probably survive without the loan guarantees.  On the other hand, the Obama administration has been at pains to continue aid to Egypt (and indeed announced an augmentation in the form of debt forgiveness and a “sovereign guarantee” of new bonds issued by Egypt), in spite of the change of regime there, Egypt’s uncertain future, and poor polling for Obama among the Egyptian people.

On Wednesday, Caroline Glick cited news reports that the Obama administration is now pressuring Israel to issue an apology to Turkey for the Mavi Marmara incident in 2010, and pay compensation to the families of those killed.  The implication Glick points out if Erdogan were to get the apology he is so determined on – a big boost for his image as an Islamic leader, at a time when he is vying with Iran and the Arab Muslim Brotherhood for primacy in that regard – ought to be obvious to Team Obama, and perhaps that’s what the administration wants.  But in the context of all the other foreign policy being perpetrated by this White House, it’s not clear that decisions – even bad ones – are being made for reasons of that kind.

J.E. Dyer’s articles have appeared at The Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions,” Patheos, The Weekly Standard online, and her own blog, The Optimistic Conservative.

Actually, they do.  Jonathan Tobin points out, for one thing, that since the last such tank order, Egypt has undergone a revolution and regime change.  The US-friendly Mubarak government is no longer in power.  We may rejoice that that regime’s excesses are a thing of the past, but its demise removes the main condition for the automatic approval of major arms deals:  a demonstrably stable, friendly government whose policies are consonant with American priorities.

The signs about Egypt’s direction may not be uniformly negative, but the point is, we don’t know where Egypt is headed.  We won’t know that until a national election is held, at the very least.  If a new government can only be formed by a coalition that includes the Muslim Brotherhood, then we should not be beefing up Egypt’s military, period.

Conventional thinking at State and Defense would emphasize the importance of keeping our hand in with Egypt by continuing to be a source of arms.  A conventional fear in this regard would be that if we cut Egypt off, the Egyptians will turn to others for their needs (very likely Russia or China, or both).  But if we believe the only way to retain influence with Egypt is to sell her whatever arms she asks for, then we have already assumed an untenable position: one in which we fear a negative result rather than pursuing a positive one.

Unfortunately, that’s the overall character of the Obama policy in the Middle East, and there appears to be no prospect of a course change.  The Egyptian tank deal has been sent to Congress at a time when the US has no meaningful, articulated policy for the region, but merely reacts endlessly to new situations, based on contingent, one-time principles.  From this shifting position, we are far more likely to be exploited by Egyptian governments, for whatever they can get out of us, than to exert positive influence over them.

The incidents are mounting up.  Israel is naturally concerned about the Abrams tank deal for Egypt, in part because Saudi Arabia is arming up even beyond the level of the historic $60 billion deal concluded with the US in 2010.  The Saudis are pursuing another $30 billion in arms purchases from the US, and have recently been approved for the purchase of 200 Leopard tanks from Germany.

Like Egypt, Saudi Arabia already has a lot of tanks relative to any potential defense scenario.  The $30 billion in naval and missile-defense system purchases from the US makes sense for the purpose of strengthening Saudi defenses against Iran, but the Saudis aren’t going to fight tank battles against the Iranians.  There is no scenario in which that would happen, and the Iranians aren’t arming up for it in any case.  But Egypt and Saudi Arabia both have reason to contemplate deploying force in the Levant – in Lebanon or Israel (or both) – and the Saudis already have given thought to doing so.

Besides worrying about what Egypt and Saudi Arabia want with hundreds of new tanks, Israel must be concerned about the trend of US policy in other areas.  One of those is the esoteric realm of Israeli maritime claims, in which American diplomacy has been gratuitously – bizarrely – unprofessional.

Israel and Lebanon are currently working to establish the boundary of their respective economic exclusion zones (EEZs), a particularly urgent labor for them because of the oil and gas discoveries off their coast.  Turkey and Syria, as well as Syria’s Russian patrons, have claimed equities in this process; Hezbollah, and by extension Iran, claim an equity as part of the Lebanese government.  Hezbollah and Iran would like to deny Israel as much as possible.  It’s a major regional issue with bad guys posturing all around it.

But US authorities, instead of supporting Israel on principle and reserving judgment until all claims are formally stated, have already endorsed the claim articulated by Lebanon, even before Israel’s EEZ claim was finalized and forwarded to the UN – and in spite of Lebanon’s refusal to negotiate directly with Israel.  There can be no excuse for such a diplomatic faux pas where an ally is concerned; what you do with allies, in a situation like this, is refrain from prejudicing their affairs in public and see what you can work out in private.

The US diplomat working the issue, Frederic Hof, has reportedly compounded this error with his justification for siding with Lebanon:

A senior administration official told Haaretz that Hof’s main goal was to prevent the border from becoming a source of tension between Israel and Lebanon, which could give Hezbollah a pretext for targeting Israeli gas installations.

By all means, let’s align our policy with Hezbollah’s so the terrorists won’t launch attacks.  Signs of pusillanimity like this are why “Assad supporters” felt free to attack the US embassy in Damascus today.  They are why observers fear the Obama administration has caved to the demands of both Russia and Turkey in approaching the deal to site a NATO missile-defense radar in Turkey.  And they are why leading from behind can’t work: because to lead at all, you need vision and a plan, not fear and reaction.

(Hat tip:  My Right Word, Israel Matzav)

J.E. Dyer’s articles have appeared at The Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions,” Patheos, The Weekly Standard online, and her own blog, The Optimistic Conservative.

What Obama’s cohort no doubt perceives as a form of civil disobedience can justifiably be seen by Israel as a hostile act – an attempt to break her blockade of Gaza – and responded to with armed force.  Israel isn’t demonstrably on the wrong side of international law with the blockade.  She is on the other side of a political divide from those who want Hamas to have as much access to weapons as it wants.

But in that political divide, the policy of the United States is not on the side opposite from Israel’s.  To demonstrate that it was, we would have to have proclaimed our opposition to the blockade and our intention not to honor it.  We have never done so.  That is the salient point, and it ought to govern what we do about the career proposed for the Audacity of Hope (hereinafter AOH).

The marine venue in which AOH will operate makes this situation different from that of US citizens engaging in civil disobedience on another nation’s territory. There exists no “right” to operate a ship under the flag of the United States.  Doing so is entirely a matter of privilege conferred by the US government, including conformity with US laws and the international conventions recognized by the US.

The concept of a “flag state’s” responsibility for the behavior of ships operating under its flag is by no means fully developed in explicit law, but it is a longstanding convention, codified in both the Geneva Conventions on the High Seas of 1958 and the UN Convention on Law of the Sea of 1982.  (Most discussions of this topic revolve around national responsibility for the behavior of fishing vessels, and for pollution and emission control.)

It is not clear what Israel could hold the flag states of the ships in the next flotilla accountable for, under international conventions – but what is clear is that there is a responsible way for the flag states to handle the problem, and an irresponsible – cynical – one.  It is not a responsible approach to stand by and allow Americans to attempt to break a blockade – commit a hostile act – under the US flag, without the authorization of the US government and indeed in contravention of its own policy.

But what can be done?  Andrew McCarthy offered an answer in the summer of 2010, shortly after the plans for AOH were announced by the Free Gaza Movement in the US.  The possibility of Americans trying to perpetrate unauthorized actions at sea was foreseen by US lawmakers a long time ago, and that is why Title 18 of the US Code contains Section 962, which makes it a crime to “furnish, fit out, or arm” (or “attempt to furnish, fit out, or arm”) a vessel that will be used to “cruise or commit hostilities” against a nation with which the United States is at peace.

McCarthy suggested using Title 18 Section 2339B as well, which makes it a crime to provide support or resources to designated foreign terrorist organizations.  As McCarthy and others have laid out in detail, the Free Gaza Movement has extensive ties to Hamas (designated a terrorist organization by the US government); whenever Free Gaza attempts to break the blockade that hampers Hamas’s arms pipeline, it is providing support to Hamas.  McCarthy points out that the laws he cites make the attempt a crime, as well as the accomplishment of the prohibited acts.

Other commentators have also pointed out that the US could take action against the funding sources of the Free Gaza Movement, given its terrorist ties.  One step would be revoking the 501(c)(3) status of the American Educational Trust (AET), through which tax-deductible donations to Free Gaza can be made.

New information about the 2010 flotilla reinforces the concern that participating in one of these flotillas involves both supporting terrorism and incurring an armed confrontation.  Although it was reported that the passengers on the Turkish ferry Mavi Marmara last year were “unarmed” (except for metal pipes, rocks, and other items used as weapons), photos obtained by Israeli news outlets last week show that at least two of the passengers on the ship were armed with handguns (see here and here).

It doesn’t matter that the planners of this year’s flotilla state that they will be going in unarmed.  They said that last year too.

The Obama administration may cynically calculate that Israel isn’t going to break off ties or void agreements with the US because of AOH joining the flotilla under a US flag.  But relying on that assumption – and not caring about the consequences of a disorderly attempt mounted on the high seas – is not demonstrating global leadership or integrity.  It’s acting like the world’s worst nations.  It’s acting like a community organizer, whose priority is provoking disorder and undermining the sources of order and security.

That’s the central issue in this drama for the US.  In a case like the Gaza flotilla, what is considered reliable “law” or convention will be what the US upholds or doesn’t.  Obama will be setting an example with his handling of the high profile, US-flagged flotilla participant: one that will send ripples through the ill-disposed segment of the geopolitical world.  What the US will not enforce, anyone will feel free to breach.  That will come back on us as quickly as it will affect Israel.

Perhaps the Turkish government will succeed in its new effort to discourage the Turkish participants in the flotilla.  Perhaps a lawsuit filed by a Canadian will result in an injunction against the participation planned by a Canadian ship.  Perhaps Israel’s arm-twisting in the capitals of Europe will bear fruit, or the warnings of Israeli lawyers about the liability of international marine services firms like Inmarsat, the marine communications company.

But the US should be taking the lead in enforcing maritime order here, including warning and deterring our own citizens.  There is no bureaucratic manual, no book of step-by-step instructions, that dictates what we must do in this situation; rather, we have a policy choice – a choice of national character – to come down on the side of order or disorder.  If we choose the latter, we cannot for long remain the source of global standards and conventions, for operations on the high seas or for anything else.

J.E. Dyer’s articles have appeared at The Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions,” Patheos, The Weekly Standard online, and her own blog, The Optimistic Conservative.

To get to $40 billion, the G-8 summit staffers had to add together three separate mumble-mumbles: a pledge to make $20 billion available through international development banks to “aid…economic transitions”; $10 billion in bilateral (country-to-country) aid from individual G-8 members; and another $10 billion offered by Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Qatar (which are not, technically, members of the G-8).

And as the Wall Street Journal puts it, “the G-8′s official declaration avoided giving details about how much new aid individual countries were willing to commit to the region.”  Instead, the G-8 “kick[ed] many key decisions about financial support to later in the year.”  Its leaders did not, however, neglect to “welcome support from other bilateral partners, including from the region.”

So, basically, the G-8 pledged very little, if anything, that it can actually be held to at a later date.  This is probably wise, given that the G-8 nations are plagued by their own economic problems and literally do not have even the $10 billion mumbled about in bilateral aid.  They’d have to borrow it.

Many pundits noticed that the summiteers ignored the Eurozone’s woes, an oversight that puts in an interesting light their posturing on Libya and other topics.  Germany – a (relatively) solvent G-8 member – will have her hands full bailing out Greece, Portugal, and Spain, let alone “emerging Arab democracies.”

President Obama attended the summit representing a nation with no federal budget and a national debt soaring past $14 trillion, his Treasury secretary warning that debt servicing or government functions will have to be suspended in August if Congress can’t come to an agreement.  Japan is still staggering from the March earthquake and nuclear plant meltdown; Russia is a chronic, commodities-dependent basket case.  Britain, France, and Italy are frantically “streamlining” public services and defense procurement spending as their entitlement and military operations costs mount.  It takes this company to make Canada look vibrant and well-run by comparison.

If any actual money is forthcoming from the “$40 billion” pledge, observers can be pardoned for guessing it will be the $10 billion from the Gulf nations (and will not go to what Westerners would recognize as the economic promotion of democracy).  There is more than a whiff of a decadent self-deception in the magniloquent G-8 gesture; the Western leaders, in particular, come off like once-rich, now overextended aristocrats trading on family names and state pensions to stay on the geopolitical A-list.

Which is not actually a problem, aid-to-emerging-Arab-democracies-wise, because, conveniently enough, no emerging Arab democracies – outside of Iraq – are identifiable yet.  The Arab Spring has resulted so far in a series of bloody crackdowns, one full-scale civil war, and two nations (Tunisia and Egypt) under new but non-elected, still-autocratic government.  We can certainly hope that both Tunisia and Egypt will hold the elections promised to the people.  Whether those elections will produce self-sustaining consensual polities, with liberal ideals and peaceful changes of government, is another question.

There is no reason to hope that “economic aid” will promote this outcome.  Economic aid given for precisely the purpose of promoting liberalism and democracy has a long history; the liberal developed world has been shoveling such aid at the less-developed world since the 1950s, and its track record is poor.  Without a prior commitment to the rule of law and government transparency in the recipient nations, such funds are frequently misappropriated.  In fact, “economic aid” provided by illiberal investors (China, Russia, Saudi Arabia) is more likely to go to the purposes intended by the donors, because those donors are perfectly forthright about their own interests and the strings attached.

But the good news about all this is that the event described in the international media – “the G-8 pledging $40 billion to emerging Arab democracies” – is a chimera.  The episode is largely an exercise in posturing and narrative-building, with the full complicity of the news media.  A more accurate rendition of it would go something like this: “G-8 may borrow $10 billion more from China and co-sign at development banks to aid unspecified Arab governments; conditions, timing vague; Saudis, others make own pledge.”

It’s worth noting the disconnect here, between the daily life of the average G-8 taxpayer – full of accountability and hard realities – and the all-but-counterfactual narrative-building that characterizes many in their governments and media.  The people who represent the true legacy of the West may have little voice today in the centers of power and strategic communication, but there remains an uncorrupted core, in Europe and North America and a few other outposts around the globe.  History tells us we don’t have to start with more than that, to prevail in our own generation.

J.E. Dyer’s articles have appeared at The Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions,” Patheos, The Weekly Standard online, and her own blog, The Optimistic Conservative.

Man, it certainly is great that those Americans fi-nal-ly elected an intelligent guy, a man from Harvard no less, and a man of the world.

Oh yes, Obama really does wonders for the relationships between European states and the United States. He knows how to behave and he would never – evah! – do anything to insult Europeans or make himself look like an ass.

Uh, never mind that.

On his show for Fox News, Glenn Beck made a compilation of Obama’s biggest blunders during his trip to Europe (thus far). Watch it, but be forewarned: it’s truly pathetic.

My, oh my. You’d think it’s not that difficult to wait until the end of Britain’s national anthem before toasting to the queen, but apparently that’s above boy wonder’s pay grade. And let’s not even mention Obama’s botching of the signing of the Queen’s guestbook. 2008? Really, Mr. Messiah? As Beck said, I understand that 2008 was a great year for you, but it’s time to move. On.

During his next visit, it’d be wonderful if he’d accidentally call Britain’s queen “Queen Victoria” and refer to Europe as a whole as “the inventors of slavery.” That’d certainly shake things up. Or perhaps he could shout Gegen die Mauer or Ausweis, und schnell! during an official visit to Germany. I’m sure Chancellor Angela Merkel would be quite charmed by such a hilarious joke. Ahem.

This post originally appeared at Right Across The Atlantic.

So, Barack Obama is currently touring Europe. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking: Europe, why? Doesn’t he detest the Old Continent?

Well, yeah. Judging by the way he has treated Europe ever since he became president, at least.

Apparently, however, he now feels we’re somehow of vital importance for his agenda. (You wonder whether his dismal approval ratings at home have anything to do with this trip, but that as an aside) So he graces us with his presence. Oh my, how wonderful: the almighty himself has arrived. (I guess that means that the end of Europe is indeed nigh; nigher even than most of us thought)

The British newspaper the Telegraph reports that British PM David Cameron and Obama have dubbed the relationship between their two countries, which was once known as “the special relationship,” as the essential relationship. Apparently, the American president wants to send a message of friendship to the British people (who he has insulted in numerous occasion).

That’s very considerate of him. Especially considering the fact that he is not exactly known for being considerate to anyone.

In any case, I’m afraid that the renaming of the ‘special relationship’ is actually an insult as well. Special implies something positive; something you’re happy about. Essential, on the other hand, may give people the impression that it’s not a marriage (or relationship) of love, but of necessity. We need each other… whether we like it or not.

Of course the two men also stress the point that there’s “a deep emotional connection” between their nations, but it’s clear to anyone with half a brain that such words don’t come from the heart. Not from Obama’s, anyway.

This post originally appeared at Right Across The Atlantic.

Reestablishing a functioning economy in the eastern portion of the country would, in theory, achieve more than merely bringing in revenue for the Libyan opposition. Besides promoting societal coalescence, it would extend commercial ties abroad for the rebel-held provinces. The routine contacts incident to the oil trade – banking, shipping, insurance – could become bellwethers of the rebel government’s viability and fiduciary standing. Qaddafi’s strategic position would weaken further as his former source of power was taken over by his rivals.

There are hazards, of course, in backing into nation-building this way. While Qaddafi is still armed and at large, he will want to resist an opposition takeover of the Libyan oil trade. His situation in that regard is not necessarily hopeless: the rebels hold the port cities in the east – largely by default – but the actual oil and gas reserves (and much of the industrial infrastructure) lie principally in the Libyan interior, where the opposition has no military capacity to seize or hold territory. There is a definite risk in giving Qaddafi a reason to fight for the oilfields while he is not yet entirely neutralized. But Qaddafi looks cornered at the moment; perhaps he can be neutralized by fiat, through a build-up of infrastructure and momentum for the Libyan opposition.

It would be dangerous to extrapolate success of this kind – if it is achieved – to situations elsewhere. Qaddafi’s Libya is unique: few dictatorships are as poorly integrated with their societies, and no other has such quiescent borders. Meanwhile, the indispensable factor in the current situation is the NATO airpower holding Qaddafi in check. Given those conditions, however, it’s not overly optimistic to hope that key setbacks in diplomacy and commerce will induce Qaddafi to fall.

It’s worth noting that these methods are hardly new. In one sense, they represent a reversion to the methods that organized much of Europe into nation-states in centuries past.  The application of both power and principle (e.g., respect for national sovereignty) has been much more selective than not throughout human history; treating either quantity as a matter for bureaucratic management is only possible in a situation where orderly internationalism is enforced by a handful (or fewer) of great powers. One of the biggest “stories” of 2011 is what the US is not doing in that regard.

J.E. Dyer blogs at The Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions” and as The Optimistic Conservative.  She writes a weekly column for Patheos.

The Turkish effort in Libya is gathering steam, with the dispatch of warships to enforce the embargo and the visit to Ankara on Monday of a Qaddafi envoy, reportedly in Turkey to discuss a truce. Turkey is being billed overtly as a “mediator,” perhaps in part because NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh-Rasmussen was also in Ankara Monday.

The Erdogan government may have no better luck brokering a Libyan truce than the African Union had the week before last, but Turkey is forging ahead in the political-momentum sweepstakes. On 31 March, Erdogan became the first Turkish prime minster ever to visit the Kurds of Iraq. While in Iraqi Kurdistan, he opened a Turkish consulate in Irbil and presided at the opening ceremony for a new commercial airport.

With this VIP outreach, Erdogan hopes to put Turkey on offense and assume leadership on one of the region’s principal sources of destabilization. Besides Turkey, Syria and Iran are both concerned about restive Kurdish minorities, especially while their central governments are under threat. Opening a unique dialogue with the Iraqi Kurds – who are invested with the state trappings of a semi-autonomous government – is a way for Turkey to gain leverage over the other Kurd-troubled nations. Erdogan naturally hopes to preempt his own Kurdish insurgents as well, with a view to border security and the 2011 national elections.

There may also be an element in this of preempting Iran, which has been caught in recent weeks promoting an Islamist insurgency in neighboring Azerbaijan, a client of Turkey and the U.S. Turkey and Iran want to retain influence with each other, but they are competitors in their visions for regional (and global Islamic) leadership; both are working harder right now to seize separate, sometimes conflicting opportunities than to butter each other up. It was as a participant in this competition that Turkey, in March, confiscated an Iranian arms shipment bound for Syria and went on to report the breach – quite officiously – to the UN.

But wait – there’s more. Turkey achieved a military first last week, hosting a trilateral exercise with the armies of Afghanistan and Pakistan. NATO is pleased to see this as a helpful outreach on behalf of the alliance. Turkey sees it as an exercise in regional and Islamic-state leadership –and as a declaration of political independence, like the Turkish armed forces’ series of drills with China (see here and here), and the Turks’ intransigence on their demands regarding the purchase of F-35 fighter jets from the U.S. Turkey wants avionics source codes, which the U.S., in spite of pressure from Britain and Israel, decided in 2009 not to hand over to any F-35 customer. In late March, Turkey suspended its F-35 purchase until the source codes are forthcoming, which neither Israel nor Britain has felt in a position to do.

On Monday, President Abdullah Gul arrived in Indonesia for the first visit of a Turkish president since 1995 (and only the third since Indonesian independence in 1945). Among the ties he seeks to strengthen are Turkish arms exports – to both Indonesia and Malaysia, the most predominantly Muslim of the Southeast Asian nations. Notably, the arms exports in prospect are weighted heavily toward armored fighting vehicles, something both nations already have in abundance. But Turkey hopes to expand arms cooperation to include the joint development of warships and artillery weapons.

U.S. analysts would once have considered this a disquieting development, but perhaps we can congratulate ourselves that we no longer overreact to these things.

J.E. Dyer blogs at The Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions” and as The Optimistic Conservative.  She writes a weekly column for Patheos.

We know a lot more today about what happened in the Gaza war of 2008-09 than we did when I chaired the fact-finding mission appointed by the U.N. Human Rights Council that produced what has come to be known as the Goldstone Report. If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document.

Shocked, Shocked: Hamas Doesn’t Investigate Itself

Goldstone implies he was urged to this view by the independent committee that reviewed the Goldstone Report – produced for the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) – for the UN.  He has this to say about that:

The final report by the U.N. committee of independent experts — chaired by former New York judge Mary McGowan Davis — that followed up on the recommendations of the Goldstone Report has found that “Israel has dedicated significant resources to investigate over 400 allegations of operational misconduct in Gaza” while “the de facto authorities (i.e., Hamas) have not conducted any investigations into the launching of rocket and mortar attacks against Israel.”

(Full text of independent committee report here.)

How about that.  Hamas, the terrorist organization with extensive ties to Iran, hasn’t conducted any investigations into its launching of rockets and mortars “purposefully and indiscriminately … at civilian targets.”  Meanwhile, regarding the Goldstone Report’s allegations that Israel targeted civilians indiscriminately, Goldstone has this to say:

The allegations of intentionality by Israel were based on the deaths of and injuries to civilians in situations where our fact-finding mission had no evidence on which to draw any other reasonable conclusion. While the investigations published by the Israeli military and recognized in the U.N. committee’s report have established the validity of some incidents that we investigated in cases involving individual soldiers, they also indicate that civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy. (Emphasis added)

In the first sentence, Goldstone acknowledges that his report’s allegations of intentional targeting of civilians were based on a lack of evidence – not positive evidence.  Another way of putting his proposition is that the investigators assumed intentionality unless positive evidence proved the converse.  That’s one thing for a bull session at the local pub, but it’s entirely another for an international proceeding whose outcome is intended by the parties to result in a non-consensual referral of Israel to the International Criminal Court (ICC) (a body to which Israel is not a State Party).

Goldstone goes on to acknowledge that where internal Israeli investigations found wrongdoing, commanders were subject to punishment.  Read, as they say, the whole thing. 

Ex Post Facto Quarterbacking and End-Running the Rules

Objections to the methods and conclusions of the Goldstone Report have been many and varied.  This website is a one-stop venue in which a number of them are captured (see especially the Procedural Flaws page).  I will highlight just a couple.

One form of criticism has come from experienced military officers, the most vocal of whom is Colonel Richard Kemp, CBE, a retired infantry officer of the British army who served in Afghanistan and Bosnia.  He testified against the tendentious conclusions of the Goldstone Report before the UNHCR in October 2009, starting with this statement:

The IDF did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare.

Kemp can be seen here making similar points to a BBC anchor (h/t: Solomonia). He acknowledges that in the chaos of war, any commander – British, Israeli, or any other nationality – can inflict inadvertent damage or even simply make mistakes. But as he observes in this June 2009 address to the Jerusalem Center for Public Affair, “Mistakes are not war crimes.”

That point begs the question of how the two are distinguished, as a matter of international law.  The second major form of criticism applied to the Goldstone Report is its cavalier treatment of that overriding question. In the Berkeley Journal of International Law’s “Publicist” forum, Army JAG LTC Chris Jenks and South Texas College of Law Professor Geoffrey Corn basically dismantle the Goldstone Report in that regard.  In a section entitled “Ex Post Facto Analysis,” the authors say:

The [Goldstone investigative] Mission claimed it was “not attempting to second-guess with hindsight the decisions of commanders.”  But lacking relevant and sufficient information, the Goldstone Report does just that—it applies a retrospective approach to targeting decisions made during armed conflict.

In failing to view the events through the eyes of a “reasonable military commander” and at the time the targeting decisions were made, the Goldstone Report errs as a matter of law. More problematic for future military operations, and the military leaders that plan and execute those operations, is the risk that the Goldstone Report will set a flawed precedent which may intellectually corrupt future investigations of targeting decisions during armed conflict. Ultimately, such a flawed precedent risks producing a chilling effect on military commanders responsible for the violent execution of combat missions against belligerent opponents, thereby compromising the effectiveness of such operations as well as any investigations as to the manner by which they were conducted.

According to Jenks and Corn:

… the Goldstone report … overtly substitutes its Mission members’ post hoc judgment for those of military commanders on the ground at the time … despite lacking relevant information concerning the commander’s mission, tactical assessment, threats posed, and weapon systems and support available (or not), in reviewing one attack, the Goldstone Report “found it difficult to believe that mortars were the most accurate weapons available at the time.” Labeling the use of mortars “reckless,” the report suggests that “helicopter and fighter jets” would have been more appropriate without any information as to whether those assets were even available to the military commander on the ground.

The Jenks/Corn piece goes on to point out serious – and, from a precedential standpoint, dangerous – flaws in the jurisdictional reasoning behind the Goldstone Mission. Its implication that Israel was “unwilling” to investigate alleged war crimes by the IDF was invalid; Israel had opened dozens of investigations by the summer of 2009.  Charging Israel with “unwillingness to investigate” as a trigger for international intervention was unwarranted, by any credible understanding of international law.

Equally questionable was a separate but related matter: the ICC’s handling of a declaration by the Palestinian Authority, in January 2009, that it sought (or “accepted”) ICC jurisdiction over PA territories – a move made for the purpose of involving the ICC in a war crimes investigation.  As Jenks and Corn point out, ICC jurisdiction over non-States Parties (such as the PA, which is not a state, or Israel, which is not a party) can only be conferred by an ad hoc decision of the UN Security Council (UNSC).  The ICC is not empowered to accept or reject “applications” from whoever wants its jurisdiction.  That the ICC did not immediately, on that basis, deny the appeal and direct the PA to the UNSC, in the view of Jenks and Corn sets a very bad precedent.

The US and the Goldstone Report

The UNHCR – that body enriched by the membership of Angola, Libya, China, and Cuba, among others – approved the Goldstone Report in October 2009, although US diplomats had requested the Council to postpone its vote until 2010.  The UN General Assembly then endorsed the report in November 2009, requesting the Secretary General to refer it to the UNSC and demanding that Israel and the relevant Palestinian “authorities” (presumably Hamas) respond to and demonstrate cooperation with the report (the US joined 17 other nations in voting No).

The US House of Representatives, recognizing the report’s flaws, voted the same week to condemn it.  In the Senate, 30 senators signed a letter to Hillary Clinton in late September 2009 asking her to block any punitive action envisioned by the UN based on the Goldstone Report.

Congress and the president should now join the Netanyahu government in calling for the UN General Assembly to repeal its endorsement of the Goldstone Report.  The report is deeply flawed, as was its premise and its process.  The General Assembly vote in November 2009 was in itself an indication of that: although 114 nations voted to endorse the report, that tally fell short of the usual zeal for condemning Israel, and reflected a high number of abstentions along with the 18 No votes (scroll to the bottom at the link to see the voting details). Among those abstaining were Russia, the UK, Spain, Sweden, and quite a few other European, Latin American, and Asian delegations.  Recognition is widespread that the Goldstone Report’s flaws carry menacing implications for national sovereignty and the manufacturing of “war crimes.”

The US should lead the effort to withdraw UN endorsement of the Goldstone Report, and should state clearly our intention to veto any UNSC consideration of proposals based on it.  Israel has been the target of this assault on national sovereignty and the integrity of UN-chartered processes; the next assault could be mounted against any other nation.  If the precedent of delegitimization through extra-legal machinations is allowed to be set, no one will be immune.

J.E. Dyer blogs at The Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions” and as The Optimistic Conservative.  She writes a weekly column for Patheos.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s meetings in Paris with the G8 foreign ministers on Monday left her European interlocutors with more questions than answers about the Obama administration’s stance on intervention in Libya.Inside the foreign ministers’ meeting, a loud and contentious debate erupted about whether to move forward with stronger action to halt Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi’s campaign against the Libyan rebels and the violence being perpetrated against civilians. Britain and France argued for immediate action while Germany and Russia opposed such a move, according to two European diplomats who were briefed on the meeting.

Clinton stayed out of the fray, repeating the administration’s position that all options are on the table but not specifically endorsing any particular step. She also did not voice support for stronger action in the near term, such as a no-fly zone or military aid to the rebels, both diplomats said.

“The way the U.S. acted was to let the Germans and the Russians block everything, which announced for us an alignment with the Germans as far as we are concerned,” one of the diplomats told The Cable.

Clinton’s unwillingness to commit the United States to a specific position led many in the room to wonder exactly where the administration stood on the situation in Libya.

“Frankly we are just completely puzzled,” the diplomat said. “We are wondering if this is a priority for the United States.”

I’m beginning to understand the phrase “above the fray” or “stayed out of the fray” as essentially means refusing to involve or commit to anything much less make a decision. And that’s precisely what happened at the G8 meeting.

What worried diplomats even more was this:

On the same day, Clinton had a short meeting with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, in which Sarkozy pressed Clinton to come out more forcefully in favor of action in Libya. She declined Sarkozy’s request, according to a government source familiar with the meeting.

Sarkozy told Clinton that “we need action now” and she responded to him, “there are difficulties,” the source said, explaining that Clinton was referring to China and Russia’s opposition to intervention at the United Nations. Sarkozy replied that the United States should at least try to overcome the difficulties by leading a strong push at the U.N., but Clinton simply repeated, “There are difficulties.”

One diplomat, who supports stronger action in Libya, contended that the United States’ lack of clarity on this issue is only strengthening those who oppose action.

That “lack of clarity” can be translated as a lack of leadership on the issue.  Casting around in the G8 minister’s meeting for some sort of consensus toward action or inaction, both sides looked to the US to commit.  It simply refused to do so.  Whether you support or oppose a NFZ, you have to be concerned that we had no strategy or apparent game plan when we entered that meeting.

Hillary Clinton tries to spin it as it being a matter of venue:

In an interview with the BBC on Wednesday in Cairo, Clinton pointed to the U.N. Security Council as the proper venue for any decision to be made and she pushed back at the contention by the British and the French that the U.S. was dragging its feet.

“I don’t think that is fair.  I think, based on my conversations in Paris with the G-8 ministers, which, of course, included those two countries, I think we all agree that given the Arab League statement, it was time to move to the Security Council to see what was possible,” Clinton said.  I don’t want to prejudge it because countries are still very concerned about it.  And I know how anxious the British and the French and the Lebanese are, and they have taken a big step in presenting something.  But we want to get something that will do what needs to be done and can be passed.”

“It won’t do us any good to consult, negotiate, and then have something vetoed or not have enough votes to pass it,” Clinton added.

But that is patent nonsense.  You had most of the movers and shakers there.  In fact, it was the prefect venue to get preliminary negotiations underway, make a case one way or the other and then use the UN as the final place to seal the deal.  Diplomacy 101.

Now, this is important – note the day the BBC interview was done: Wednesday.  Note the day the G8 meeting was: Monday.

So what happened Tuesday?

Ah, glad you asked.

At the start of this week, the consensus around Washington was that military action against Libya was not in the cards. However, in the last several days, the White House completely altered its stance and successfully pushed for the authorization for military intervention against Libyan leader Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi. What changed?

The key decision was made by President Barack Obama himself at a Tuesday evening senior-level meeting at the White House, which was described by two administration officials as “extremely contentious.” Inside that meeting, officials presented arguments both for and against attacking Libya. Obama ultimately sided with the interventionists. His overall thinking was described to a group of experts who had been called to the White House to discuss the crisis in Libya only days earlier.

“This is the greatest opportunity to realign our interests and our values,” a senior administration official said at the meeting, telling the experts this sentence came from Obama himself. The president was referring to the broader change going on in the Middle East and the need to rebalance U.S. foreign policy toward a greater focus on democracy and human rights.

You may be saying, “wohoo, he finally made a freakin’ decision”.  Well yeah, he could see how it was going and he could see where it would probably end up, so you have to wonder, was it a decision or was it more of a rationalization?

My guess it was the latter.  And it is the third “strategy” for the region that the US has displayed in as many months.

But Obama’s stance in Libya differs significantly from his strategy regarding the other Arab revolutions. In Egypt and Tunisia, Obama chose to rebalance the American stance gradually backing away from support for President Hosni Mubarak and Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali and allowing the popular movements to run their course. In Yemen and Bahrain, where the uprisings have turned violent, Obama has not even uttered a word in support of armed intervention – instead pressing those regimes to embrace reform on their own. But in deciding to attack Libya, Obama has charted an entirely new strategy, relying on U.S. hard power and the use of force to influence the outcome of Arab events.

“In the case of Libya, they just threw out their playbook,” said Steve Clemons, the foreign policy chief at the New America Foundation. “The fact that Obama pivoted on a dime shows that the White House is flying without a strategy and that we have a reactive presidency right now and not a strategic one.”

Bingo – Clemons is dead on the money.  There is no well thought out strategy for the Middle East – this is just someone winging it, figuring out where world (or regional opinion lies) and giving himself enough space for deniability should something go wrong.  The cool kids in the world want to bomb Libya and protect civilians, so hey, even though it seemed clear we weren’t interested in doing that, perhaps we should do it too now that they’re committed – but we shouldn’t be seen as leading it in case it turns out badly”.

The rationalization for backing the action comes from the realization that it is probably going to happen, and unlike the US, France and the UK aren’t going to let Russia and Germany decide it for them without ever engaging in a fight.

So we now trot out our 3rd “realignment” of “our interests and values”?  Really? Pray what are they?  And what were they?

Clemons point about the fact that this points to a reactive presidency shouldn’t come as a surprise.  It’s part of leadership, or lack thereof.  Leaders have a strategy and a plan.  You may not like it, but they have one.   And since it has to do with foreign affairs, it should address the best interests of the US.  Three different strategies driven by who knows what in a three month period does not argue for a comprehensive or coherent strategy, much less a plan.

This is the ultimate in finger in the wind diplomacy and another in a long line of indicators highlighting the dangerous lack of leadership under which this country is now suffering.

—
Bruce McQuain blogs at Questions and Observations (QandO), Blackfive, the Washington Examiner and the Green Room.  Follow him on Twitter: @McQandO

The GCC is composed of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, Bahrain, Oman and Kuwait.   It was created in 1991 (think Iraq invasion of Kuwait), the 6 members share common borders and are committed by their charter to help each other in times of need.

The action by the GCC, as you might imagine, is in direct conflict with how the White House has indicated it would prefer the situation in Bahrain be resolved.  Obviously that’s not carried much weight with the GCC.

The move created another quandary for the Obama administration, which obliquely criticized the Saudi action without explicitly condemning the kingdom, its most important Arab ally. The criticism was another sign of strains in the historically close relationship with Riyadh, as the United States pushes the country to make greater reforms to avert unrest.

Other symptoms of stress seem to be cropping up everywhere.

Saudi officials have made no secret of their deep displeasure with how President Obama handled the ouster of the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, charging Washington with abandoning a longtime ally. They show little patience with American messages about embracing what Mr. Obama calls “universal values,” including peaceful protests.

The GCC move has prompted both Robert Gates, Secretary of Defense and Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State, to cancel upcoming visits to Saudi Arabia.

Again, the apparent genesis of these tensions appear to be related to the way the US handled Egypt.  It has caused the Saudis and other GCC nations to trust the US less than before:

The latest tensions between Washington and Riyadh began early in the crisis when King Abdullah told President Obama that it was vital for the United States to support Mr. Mubarak, even if he began shooting protesters. Mr. Obama ignored that counsel. “They’ve taken it personally,” said one senior American familiar with the conversations, “because they question what we’d do if they are next.”

Since then, the American message to the Saudis, the official said, is that “no one can be immune,” and that the glacial pace of reforms that Saudi Arabia has been engaged in since 2003 must speed up.

Obviously the Saudi’s have their own ideas of how to handle this and apparently aren’t taking kindly to the US attempting to dictate how it should handle it’s internal affairs.  And, given the treatment of Mubarak, the Saudi rulers can’t help but feel that they’re just as likely to be thrown under the bus if protests were to escalate as was Mubarak.

Consequently, they’ve decided to go their own way and handle it with force within the GCC  while throwing money at the problem within the Saudi Kingdom.  Speaking of the latter:

One of President Obama’s top advisers described the moves as more in a series of “safety valves” the Saudis open when pressure builds; another called the subsidies “stimulus funds motivated by self-preservation.”

Saudi officials, who declined to comment for this article to avoid fueling talk of divisions between the allies, said that the tensions had been exaggerated and that Americans who criticized the pace of reforms did not fully appreciate the challenges of working in the kingdom’s ultraconservative society.

Of course the difference between their “stimulus funds” and ours is they actually have the money.   But it is ironic to see the adviser describe “stimulus funds” in those terms isn’t it?  The actual point here should be evident though.  The GCC has rejected the “Bahrain model” as the desired method of addressing the unrest.  As you recall that was the “regime alteration” model, v. the regime change model.

So where does that leave us?

Demonstrating to Iran that the Saudi-American alliance remains strong has emerged as a critical objective of the Obama administration. King Abdullah, who was widely quoted in the State Department cables released by WikiLeaks as warning that the United States had to “cut off the head of the snake” in Iran, has led the effort to contain Iran’s ambitions to become a major regional power. In the view of White House officials, any weakness or chaos inside Saudi Arabia would be exploited by Iran.

For that reason, several current and former senior American intelligence and regional experts warned that in the months ahead, the administration must proceed delicately when confronting the Saudis about social and political reforms.

”Over the years, the U.S.-Saudi relationship has been fraught with periods of tension over the strategic partnership,” said Ellen Laipson, president of the Stimson Center, a public policy organization. “Post-September 11 was one period, and the departure of Mubarak may be another, when they question whether we are fair-weather friends.”

That phone keeps ringing at 3am, doesn’t it?

Questions: given the “critical objective” as outlined above, is it smart to cancel visits by SecDef and SecState?  Doesn’t that possibly signal lack of support for the Saudis and play into the perception the US is a fair-weather friend?  Doesn’t that promise the possibility of more actions the Saudi’s might take that will be contra to the US’s advice?   Isn’t now the time to be going in there and making the case with top leaders and showing support while trying to twist a few arms to ramp down the situation instead of canceling?

UPDATE: Bahrain declares a “state of emergency”. 2 protesters killed 200 wounded. 1 Saudi soldier reported to have been killed.

Here’s a little insight into the Iranian connection mentioned above:

The entrance of foreign forces, including Saudi troops and those from other Gulf nations, threatened to escalate a local political conflict into a regional showdown; on Tuesday, Tehran, which has long claimed that Bahrain is historically part of Iran, branded the move “unacceptable.”

[…]

“The presence of foreign forces and interference in Bahrain’s internal affairs is unacceptable and will further complicate the issue,” Ramin Mehmanparast, the Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman, said at a news conference in Tehran, according to state-run media.

Even as predominantly Shiite Muslim Iran pursues a determined crackdown against dissent at home, Tehran has supported the protests led by the Shiite majority in Bahrain.

“People have some legitimate demands, and they are expressing them peacefully,” Mr. Memanparast said. “It should not be responded to violently.”

He added, “We expect their demands be fulfilled through correct means.”

You have to love their chutzpah.  A little analysis:

The Gulf Cooperation Council was clearly alarmed at the prospect of a Shiite political victory in Bahrain, fearing that it would inspire restive Shiite populations in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to protest as well. The majority of the population in Saudi Arabia’s oil-rich eastern provinces is Shiite, and there have already been small protests there.

“If the opposition in Bahrain wins, then Saudi loses,” said Mustafa el-Labbad, director of Al Sharq Center for Regional and Strategic Studies in Cairo. “In this regional context, the decision to move troops into Bahrain is not to help the monarchy of Bahrain, but to help Saudi Arabia itself .”

So that’s the lens by which much of what happens should be viewed – two regional rivals, each aligned with a different sect of Islam as well as different ethnic groups (Arab v. Persian) attempting to take advantage of a situation in the case of Iran, or trying to prevent change that would favor Iran in the case of Saudi Arabia.

The possible result?

An adviser to the United States government, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the news media, agreed. “Iran’s preference was not to get engaged because the flow of events was in their direction,” he said. “If the Saudi intervention changes the calculus, they will be more aggressive.”

Of course they have their own problems at home, but Iran will probably, at least covertly, try to support the opposition in Bahrain.  It is obviously perceived to be in their best interest to do so.

The primary reason that Bahrain has ended up asking the GCC in is because the recommended way to resolve the crisis, negotiate with the oppositions, was rejected by the opposition. As I mentioned in the earlier post about regime realignment, the entire process hinged on the opposition being willing to engage in honest, good faith negotiations with the government.  It appears the Bahranian royal family at least made an attempt to do the things necessary as advised by the US:

The royal family allowed thousands of demonstrators to camp at Pearl Square. It freed some political prisoners, allowed an exiled opposition leader to return and reshuffled the cabinet. And it called for a national dialogue.

But the concessions — after the killings — seemed to embolden a movement that went from calling for a true constitutional monarchy to demanding the downfall of the monarchy. The monarchy has said it will consider instituting a fairly elected Parliament, but it insisted that the first step would be opening a national dialogue — a position the opposition has rejected, though it was unclear whether the protesters were speaking with one voice.

Indeed.  But it doesn’t matter now, does it? Events have apparently moved beyond that.  The likelihood of this simmering down to the point that such negotiations and dialogue could occur seem remote – especially with Iran in the background keeping this all stirred up.

We live in interesting times.

—
Bruce McQuain blogs at Questions and Observations (QandO), Blackfive, the Washington Examiner and the Green Room.  Follow him on Twitter: @McQandO

“Oral sex, masturbation, and orgasms need to be taught in education,” Diane Schneider told the audience at a [United Nations conference] panel on combating homophobia and transphobia. Schneider, representing the National Education Association (NEA), the largest teachers union in the US, advocated for more “inclusive” sex education in US schools. . . . She claimed that the idea of sex education remains an oxymoron if it is abstinence-based, or if students are still able to opt-out.
Comprehensive sex education is “the only way to combat heterosexism and gender conformity,” Schneider proclaimed, “and we must make these issues a part of every middle and high-school student’s agenda.” . . .
A panel sponsored in part by the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) advocated for “comprehensive sex education” not only as a tool to combat “gender oppression,” but also as the key to achieving all of the Millennium Development Goals.

It turns out that the NEA representative, Diane Schneider, is actually a leader in the radical group GLSEN (Gay Lesbian and Straight Education Network):

Diane is a high school health educator in Spring Valley New York. She is very active with GLSEN in the Rockland County area, where she is its co-chair. She is also proud of the GSA that she advises in her high school. She is an online professor and has been active with the Health Education Leadership Team for NY State. She brings you this workshop as part of her training from the National Education Association’s (NEA’s) LGBT Trainer of Trainers.

You probably didn’t realize that America’s largest teachers’ union has an “LGBT Trainer of Trainers” program — I never imagined any such thing existed until I found Schneider’s bio on the Web site of a “PrideWorks” conference.

Something else that never crossed my mind, until it was pointed out by Maggie’s Notebook, is that Schneider’s role in GLSEN connects her to the infamous “FistGate” controversy involving Obama’s “safe schools czar” Kevin Jennings. (In 2007, Jennings was paid more than $270,000 as executive director of GLSEN.)

How was Schneider chosen to give this presentation to the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women (UNCSW)? Was it the NEA or Jennings who chose her? Did Hillary Clinton’s friend Melanne Verveer, U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues, have any role in arranging Schneider’s participation in this conference?

Whoever arranged it, apparently it is now a key aim of U.S. diplomacy that we must teach the world’s children “oral sex, masturbation, and orgasms . . . to combat heterosexism and gender conformity.”

Call it the Obama Doctrine.

The Iranian ships that came through the Suez Canal last week are in Latakia, Syria, where high-level visits and official celebrations attended their arrival.  Iran bills the ship deployment as a peace-and-friendship outreach – a message somewhat undercut by the musings of the Syrian defense minister, who reportedly says the presence of the warships “cripples Israel.”  (It doesn’t; and it looks like the Iranian ships are heading home now anyway.) Iran and Syria signed a naval cooperation pact on 25 February, which DEBKAfile says includes an agreement to base Iranian forces at Latakia.

That’s certainly possible – in fact, likely – although at this point not independently confirmed.  What is confirmed, however, is that Russia reasserted last week her determination to provide the P-800 Yakhont (SS-N-26) anti-ship cruise missile to Syria.  Assuming the missile does come to Syria, it will mark the first deployment of any missile of this kind in a Mediterranean nation.

The Yakhont is a supersonic (up to 2.5 Mach) cruise missile, a variety in which Russia has paced the world.  None of the NATO navies deploys a supersonic anti-ship cruise missile (ASCM).  Russia and China have supersonic ASCMs in their active forces; Iran has the older SS-N-22 Sunburn, acquired in the last decade.  (The Iranian frigate in the Med is not equipped with the Sunburn, however.)  India tested a supersonic BrahMos missile, developed jointly with Russia, in March 2010.

Asia has thus seen much more active and urgent development of supersonic cruise missile technology than Europe or North America.  The Yakhont is also a relatively long-range ASCM, capable of reaching targets up to 185 statute miles (300km) away using a high-altitude approach.  With the stealthier low-altitude, sea-skimming approach, the Yakhont’s range is around 75 miles, or 120km.  (In seafaring terms, the ranges are between 60 and 180 nautical miles.)  In all cases, the Yakhont can be launched well beyond line of sight.

(For comparison, the U.S. Harpoon’s range is about 80 miles (125km/67nm) and the Exocet missile’s is between 45 and 110 miles (70-180km/38-95nm), depending on variant.  Both of these missiles are, again, subsonic.)

Syria has no ships that could deploy the Yakhont, and in any case, the variant reportedly to be supplied by Russia is the land-launched coastal missile. The missiles will therefore be confined to use from the coast, from variable positions since the system is mobile.  A concern for Israel, which has objected to the missile transfer, is of course that the missiles might end up in the hands of Hezbollah.  During the 2006 conflict in southern Lebanon, Hezbollah used Chinese-made ASCMs to attack an Israeli warship and a merchant freighter off the coast of the Levant; it’s not at all out of the question for Hezbollah to obtain and use the Yakhont if it comes to Syria.

But that’s not the only reason to be concerned.  Supersonic missiles are a difficult defense problem; even the most advanced US Aegis ships would not be sanguine about facing them, especially alone.  NATO hasn’t focused on allied tactical defense scenarios against them. They were introduced in Russia’s force in the last days of the Cold War, and have not been a looming problem for naval combat in the European theater over the last two decades.  It is no overstatement to say that NATO is not prepared for this development, in the sense of being able to take it in stride or neutralize it.

There are, as usual, some mitigating factors.  One is that the threat area these missiles will create – from Syria, at least – is well east of the most heavily traveled commercial shipping lanes.  Ships going to and from the Suez Canal or the Aegean transit routes will not have to enter the threat area in the normal course of transit.  Only if ships are calling in Syria, or in Lebanon, Israel, Cyprus, or southern Turkey, will they have to transit the threat area.  Although this describes the life of a number of ferries, small freighters, and cruise ships, the geographic reality will still serve to minimize the population of innocent third-party shipping that might be menaced from the Syrian coast.

Putting the missiles in Hezbollah’s hands would expand the potential threat range somewhat to the south; from the most extreme southern point on Lebanon’s coast, the missiles would graze the approaches to the Suez Canal.

It’s a worthwhile question why Russia wants to do this badly enough to go through with it, given these limitations on the Yakhont’s effectiveness for regional power projection.  One reason might be protection for the Russian assets in Tartus, although it’s not clear who would threaten them from warships offshore.  Air defense missile batteries would seem better suited to the kind of threat that might – however remote the possibility – someday develop.  (Russia is selling short-range air defense missiles to Syria, but if the Russians are trying to fortify their naval infrastructure in Tartus against foreign attack, a longer-range system like an S-300 variant would be necessary as well.)

USGS map; author annotations

Why Russia would want to strengthen Syria’s maritime hand at this particular moment may be better explained by recent developments in offshore oil and gas exploration and Israeli diplomacy.  The oil and gas picture off the coast of the Levant has not been much on the minds of North American newshounds, but it’s big news in the Eastern hemisphere. Israelis would like to redress their foreign fuel dependency (and make some money to boot) by developing the deposits they can lay claim to – and to serve that end, in December, they concluded their first-ever exclusive economic zone (EEZ) accord, with Cyprus.

The map shows the location of recoverable oil and gas deposits in the Levant Basin Province, reported out by the US Geological Survey in early 2010 (potential area outlined in yellow, surveyed deposits indicated by red and green dots).  Obviously, any work done to explore and exploit the offshore deposits would be done by ships and floating platforms; the Chinese, on the other side of Asia, have pioneered the art of holding commercial exploration assets at risk, and there may be an element of that in the calculations of Russia and Syria.  The red ring is the threat range for the Yakhont, if deployed on Syria’s southernmost coast.  If the Yakhont were deployed from Syria’s inland territory east of Lebanon, but far enough north that Israel would have no way of intercepting a missile in early flight, its range would be extended southward as indicated by the green ring.  (The blue ring shows the threat range for a Yakhont launched from southern Lebanon.)

These are the realities of geography and geometry; they define physical limits, not explicit motives.  Two factors may make Syria and Russia especially eager to hold a latent threat over the heads of Israel and those who cooperate with her.  One is Russia’s longstanding cooperation with Syria in oil and gas production and her interest in the oilfields off Lebanon and Cyprus.  Russia’s predatory approach to the oil and gas industry has only intensified over the last decade. A comparison of the two maps here – the first showing Israel’s offshore resources, the second showing Neftegaz’s conception of the unexplored and proven deposit areas between Lebanon and Cyprus – is instructive. The discovery off Israel is awfully close to the area featured in the Neftegaz report; if nothing else, Russia will want to beat her competitors to any newly explored deposits.

Neftegaz map (see link in text)

The other, related factor is the EEZ agreement Israel has concluded with Cyprus.  Turkey was angered by it, complaining that Israel had made the agreement without any reference to the (wholly unrecognized) government of Northern Cyprus.  But the more basic issue is that Israel has newly discovered oil and gas deposits which will improve her economic and strategic position, and has achieved a milestone in routine diplomacy, affirming her status as a regular nation with the important perquisites of sovereignty.  If disputes over Levantine Basin resources arise, Israel can invoke her EEZ delineation with Cyprus.  The standard dividing line halfway between their coasts would, moreover, cut right through the areas in Neftegaz’s boresight.

Oil and gas are not the only reasons Russia and Syria would have a common interest in holding a hammer, in the form of supersonic ASCMs, over the Eastern Med.  But they constitute a proximate justification for a move that serves multiple purposes.  What is most important about this is the mere fact that Russia is doing it.  As a putative great power interested in the status quo, Russia has been reticent about making such moves in the last 20 years.  The Mediterranean, in particular, has been NATO’s “pond”; post-Cold War Russia has not sought to upset the status quo there, until now.

The turmoil in the Middle East is likely to obscure the significance of this move, but in itself, it is of a different order, arising from separate and long-term motives.  If the Yakhont does go to Syria, it will be a signal that Russian actions – and by extension Syrian actions, and others’ – will no longer be constrained by acceptance of the US/NATO-guarded status quo.  With the US apparently inert on the Yakhont matter, we may see the nations of Western Europe, freshly energized by their initiatives in Libya, taking diplomatic action on their own in the coming days.

J.E. Dyer blogs at The Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions” and as The Optimistic Conservative.  She writes a weekly column for Patheos.

“Qaddafi has lost the legitimacy to govern, and it is time for him to go without further violence or delay,” Mrs. Clinton told reporters after a special meeting of the United Nations Human Rights Council. “No option is off the table,” she said, adding “that of course includes a no-fly zone.”

But officials in Washington and elsewhere said that direct military action remained unlikely, and that the moves were designed as much as anything as a warning to Colonel Qaddafi and a show of support to the protesters seeking to overthrow his government.

It’s the last sentence that bears examination.  “Direct military action remained unlikely.” “The moves were designed as much as anything as a warning to Colonel Qaddafi.”  If the, er, cognitive dissonance hasn’t registered with you, I recommend reading it over three more times.

A warning is about something you will actually do.  When you tell the “warnee” that you’re probably not going to do it, that you’re “just” giving him a warning, he doesn’t take that as a warning.  He takes it as a bizarre, perhaps annoying exercise in irrelevance on your part.

It gives him hope that he’s got time.  It gives him reason to think you aren’t, after all, going to do anything soon that could reshape his conditions.  It gives him a reason to wait, to keep making his own plans.  To push your envelope, which he has good reason to think might be squishy.

Only a person with the soul of a game theorist could imagine that Qaddafi will take something as a warning that has been tipped to the entire world as an empty threat by the New York Times.  Does Team Obama seriously think Qaddafi will hear Hillary Clinton’s words but not get wind of the throbbing-neon caveat being issued by Washington officials on background?  It’s 2011 now, not 1964 in Robert McNamara’s Pentagon office.  No one is that isolated from the global infosphere.

Even having to discuss the issue in these terms is a sign of Team Obama’s peculiar, quasi-academic insularity.  In its foreign policy dealings, Obama’s Oval Office cohort reminds me more every day of a treasured passage from Thomas Schelling’s once-seminal 1960 treatise, The Strategy of Conflict.  This work, built around game theory, sought to illuminate the “negotiating” behavior of the nuclear-armed great powers of the Cold War.  As with all game theory, its premises survive only by ignoring the numerous alternatives available to negotiating parties in the real world.  This passage is a memorable example:

The sophisticated negotiator may find it difficult to seem as obstinate as a truly obstinate man.  If a man knocks at a door and says that he will stab himself on the porch unless given $10, he is more likely to get the $10 if his eyes are bloodshot.*

Or, in Oklahoma, he is more likely to find himself facing the barrels of a .12-gauge shotgun. It is fine to deal away consideration of realistic alternatives for narrow analytical purposes; scientific disciplines do this all the time.  But it is, by definition, unrealistic to do it when the purposes are policy and action.

Muammar Qaddafi is not bound by the rules of a game to be persuaded by mechanistic “warnings,” as if other rules in the game somehow prevent him from knowing that the warnings are a ruse to probe his will.

If the warnings get more teeth, that will become obvious with time.  But the question is why we would want to waste time with pointless fake warnings.  If we’re lucky, we’ll just get, well, lucky, and Qaddafi will have breathed his last or have exited the country within days.  But this clearly won’t be because he found the Team Obama seminar solution – warnings with a wink – impossible to withstand.  He already knows, after all, that he can silence President Obama by taking hostages (another point NYT obediently, if unintentionally, makes again in this piece).

Interestingly, Obama couldn’t get away with this if the newspaper of record had a more critical approach to his “information” themes.  The spectacle of NYT conveying the Obama themes just as they are intended – so different from its behavior during the Bush years – is growing more like something from The Onion every day.  Any four-year-old can parse the “I’m warning you! (But I’m not really going to do anything)” dynamic – but apparently the New York Times can’t.

* Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict (Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts. 1960.)  Quote from 1980 paperback version, pp. 22-23

J.E. Dyer blogs at The Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions” and as The Optimistic Conservative.  She writes a weekly column for Patheos.

Answering a question about Egypt, the former president praised President Obama’s handling of the situation there saying he’s “done quite well” and that Obama has handled it “about the same way I’d have handled it if I’d been in office.”

However, on the broader question of the Middle East peace process, Carter was much less complimentary saying, “President Obama has basically given up on peace in the Middle East.”

Pointing out that Obama had started out well, Carter blasted Obama by claiming that he’d now become “more accommodating to Netanyahu and Israel than George W. Bush was.”  Trying to dampen his critique of the Obama administration, Carter said he really wasn’t there to criticize, but he’d been asked a question and that was the answer.  “I don’t have any feeling of success for what President Obama had done in the Middle East”, Carter concluded.

The session was an hour long question and answer period on a wide range of topics including Carter’s run for the presidency, his term in office and his work after he left office.  In it Carter’s most pointed remarks came during the discussion of the Middle East peace process.

Often cited as someone who cozies up to dictators, Carter admitted to having “lunch or dinner” each time he went to Egypt with Omar Suleiman, the intelligence chief, because he knew “more about the Middle East than anyone”, and he described Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad as a “young, fairly progressive president” who had “inherited” the presidency from his father.

But it seems that even the likes of Jimmy Carter knows an empty suit when he see’s one and a person from whom you would expect to see fairly significant support can’t find it in himself to say anything positive about the Obama Middle East peace initiative – or lack thereof.

This seems to have been done in a particularly shabby manner. Obama began pressuring the British government in 2009 to authorize release of this information itself. Encountering resistance, Team Obama went ahead and agreed to give Moscow the information without permission from London.

It’s not that US administrations haven’t unilaterally undercut the nuclear deterrence posture of our European allies before.  John F. Kennedy did it as a way of resolving the Cuban missile crisis in 1962.

But if the Telegraph’s is an accurate depiction (which is probable; the communications in question reportedly involved giving the Russians Trident missile serial numbers), it’s still a rotten, low-down thing to do.

Update: Ed has links to the statements from the State Department on this, and Jake Tapper’s report on an unnamed source in the British government.  The upshot is that the New START treaty does, in fact, provide for conveying more specific information to the Russians on the British Trident missiles than START I did.  Ed has the cable citation on this.

Jake Tapper’s report does not indicate that any British source has explicitly refuted the implication of the Telegraph story.  The unnamed source he refers to is reported as saying “his understanding of the policy (i.e., the reporting policy of the arms treaties) conforms with that asserted by the state department.”

The burden of the Telegraph‘s point, however, is the following passage:

Washington lobbied London in 2009 for permission to supply Moscow with detailed data about the performance of UK missiles. The UK refused, but the US agreed to hand over the serial numbers of Trident missiles it transfers to Britain.

At this point, I have not seen a posted cable that contains information about “Washington lobbying London” on this head in 2009.  It’s unlikely the Telegraph made that part up. Perhaps that cable has yet to be posted, or I just haven’t located the pertinent passage in one that is available online.  The British concern about revealing nuclear weapons information is referenced in this cable (paragraph 17), but the specific statement about Washington pressuring London in 2009 doesn’t appear to have been sourced from a cable that has been posted to date.

Whether the British were pressured and disagreed with the proposal is the actual issue — not how much of an extension, expansion, or extrapolation from START I the reporting protocol in New START is.  I doubt the British government will be explicit about its role or sentiments in any of this.  We’ll see if the Telegraph comes out with more.

J.E. Dyer blogs at The Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions” and as The Optimistic Conservative.  She writes a weekly column for Patheos.