Syria

 Let's review the Syrian situation: a nation of 21 million people and 71,400 square miles (the size of Virginia and West Virginia, with twice the population), ruled by Bashir Assad, who has ruled since 2000, when he succeeded his father Hafez Assad, who seized power in a 1970 coup.   Bashir has strong backing from the Russians (as his father had from the Soviets) and the Chinese, and has good relations with Iran.  While a strict secularist, he supports Hezbollah and Hamas in their activities against Israel.  (His father did the same; while pushing Palestinians into Lebanon and fomenting a prolonged civil war in that country that killed tens of thousands and left Lebanon a devastated and prolonged tragedy.)  The Assads are vicious, socialist dictators.

Syria has been engaged in a civil war since March of 2011, and more than 100,000 have died.  The major insurgent groups (Free Syrian Army, Syrian Islamic Liberation Front, Syrian Islamic Front, and the Al Nusra Front, among others) involve a wide array clans and tribes (Alawites, Druze, Kurds, etc., etc.) and originally included several groups that were pro-west.  The pro-West groups have lost ground and the major rebel groups right now are associated with - though not controlled by - the Muslim Brotherhood or Al Qaeda - though there are other rebel factions as well.

Iran is heavily invested in support to Assad. Turkey - which has a long border with Syria - is supporting several of the rebel groups, even as its leader - Prime Minister Recep Erdogan - drifts toward Islamic fundamentalism and authoritarianism.

Generally speaking, there are only two major versions of how the civil war will end: Assad will win - in which case he is going to be appreciative to those who supported him: Russia, Iran and China.  Or, Assad and his regime will lose - in which case he would probably be replaced by one or another group of Islamic radicals.  If Islamic radicals replace him there is a fairly good chance that they will not be able to hold the country together.  One of three things would then happen: the nation would settle into a prolonged factional war, with no one group achieving any real measure of control; Turkey (which is moving toward Islamic radicalism) would eventually move in and either take direct control or set up a puppet regime; Iran would move in and set up a puppet regime.

This is the situation the President has decided the US should confront.

Let's be clear: the use of chemical weapons - particularly on his own people, and even more to the point on civilians - is evil.  Assad - and I am confident he did this - should be held accountable.  Assad is evil; in a better world he would be hung from a tall oak tree.

But the world we live in doesn't necessarily provide that option.  The President, perhaps in an unguarded moment, warned of action if Syria 'crossed a red line;' the Syrians did.  Given the above situation (which is, in fact, the simplified version), what does the President hope to accomplish?

At the most basic level an attack by cruise missiles - even 500 or so, plus perhaps some other ordnance - bombs and missiles from heavy bombers or our allies, will destroy some key facilities - some radar sites, command buildings, perhaps some missile sites or airplanes, as well as some training and maintenance and storage facilities.  Chemical weapons sites would probably not be targeted: not only is there risk associated with targeting chemical weapons (you may end up releasing chemicals into the atmosphere), odds are that during the last few days, having informed the world of what we are thinking, the weapons have been moved.

If, as some have suggested, the President is preparing for a sustained bombing campaign, one that is aimed at destroying much of the Syrian military and undermining the Assad regime, then the President should be prepared to back a specific rebel group.  Failure to do so will leave a broken Syria as a prize to be grabbed by the strongest rebel group, and currently the strongest groups are not friendly to the US, US interests or to US allies in the region.  Of course, backing a particular rebel group means that US involvement runs the very real risk of becoming open ended.

Is there any reasonable chance of killing Assad in a bombing campaign?  Not really - even if we wanted to - which the President earlier asserted we do not (though as I write this that certainly might have changed).  But it is worth remembering that with 150,000 US troops in a fully occupied Iraq, and a sizeable reward offered to boot, it still took us 6 months to find Saddam.  There might be a ‘serendipitous’ event, but it shouldn’t be anything anyone counts on. 

On the other hand, the US needs to plan for his death, and his replacement by others who might be more capable, or more clever in brokering some sort of deal with certain rebel groups.  What is the plan if such an event takes place?  Are we prepared to abandon the rebel group we decided to back, if a better option comes along?

Returning to the issue of the strikes, what will a series of attacks accomplish?  We might destabilize Assad, and that might lead to his downfall.  But, consider this: what if, after 50 or 60 or 70 days of bombing Assad is still in power and doesn’t seem to be wavering?  Do we keep bombing?  How long?  What is more probable is that the Syrian government has already moved everything of any value at all into dense urban settings, making weapon options very difficult.  And after several weeks we will find that targeting is getting ever more difficult as the large, ‘obvious’ targets are destroyed.  Target selection will become more difficult, not because of weapon limitations but because of humanitarian and legal considerations.  Also, what if we cause a release of gas?

At that point it will tempting to put assets on the ground who can provide up close reconnaissance and target designation.  (Ideally, targeteers would probably want such folks on the ground right now, but you can’t have everything you want.)  We can then become even more accurate in our targeting of Syrian military assets.  But none of this ensures that we will kill Assad or cause his regime to collapse.  And, we should be prepared for re-supply efforts Iran, and probably from Russia.  (One of the bizarre twists in this is that if we attack Assad and he survives he will end up with a better military because he will probably get everything replaced with the latest generation of equipment from Russia.) And, if we attack Assad and he survives: is he likely to be contrite?  Or will he stand up in front of the world and says: 'You tried, but I'm still here.' He would be energized, and US political standing might be damaged some more.

And if Assad’s regime collapses? Then what?  Perhaps a radical Islamic group takes over?  Are we prepared to back ‘our’ rebel group and prevent the other rebel group from coming to power?  What if the Islamist rebel group has majority support?

And what are the long-term impacts?  What will be the political consequences in a year, 2 years, and 10 years?  If Assad is replaced by an extreme Islamist group, one that has the strong backing of Iran, what is the next step – the sequel – to this plan?  If Assad starts teetering and the Iranians send Iranian forces to support him, are prepared to engage the Iranians?

Nations should act in accordance with national interest and long-term goals.  But there has been precious little discussion of either.  The use of chemical weapons is despicable, but is a response warranted without regard to the consequences, to the second and third order effects, to the long-term impact on US interests?

The President is seemingly prepared to engage in unilateral military action to cover what might be an inadvertent and amateurish policy declaration but that hardly constitutes a casus belli.  What the nation needs is a cogent discussion on US interests and long-term US goals.  And that requires some real leadership.  But we are seeing little of that come out of Washington.  Instead, what we get out of the President is a statement that ‘my credibility isn’t on the line, Congress and America’s credibility is on the line.’  (Interesting that the President of the United States can parse the situation in such a way that the credibility of the US might be affected without affecting the credibility of the President of the US…)

And despite the initial hullabaloo, last week the President decided that the Syrian crisis could wait; that Congress should perhaps be involved in the decision to go to war – despite the fact that it is accepted by virtually everyone that the President does have the authority to engage US forces, though he must then comply with the Constitution and the War Powers Act if forces are to remain engaged more than 30 days.  Now, both houses of Congress are engaged in the debate; that is a good thing.  After we get past issues of bravado and assertions that action is necessary to protect US credibility, the House and Senate need to ask substantive questions to the President and his minions:

What do you intend to accomplish?  Words are important here; the President et al must not talk about hopes and desires, but about those things they can force to happen.  Then they must spell out how they will force them to happen.  And, they must detail to Congress how much it will cost – in a worst-case scenario – to achieve those aims.

Assuming Congress agrees in the abstract that the aims of the President are worth further consideration, how will we know, after the initial strikes, whether we have achieved those goals?  And, if the initial strikes fail to achieve their goals, what is the next step?  (The draft proposal is focused on further use of chemical weapons; short of destroying all WMD, how can we prevent future use?)

How might this operation go in a different direction then the one planned?  And what might be the long-term consequences?  What is the plan if long-term consequences are as negative as some have forecasted, such as Assad being replaced by a strongly pro Al Qaeda regime?

6000 years of history have shown that nothing goes as expected (never mind planned) once a war starts.  Rather, wars have a way of getting out of control - quickly, moving in odd directions, and lasting far longer than expected.  US troops remain in Kosovo 15 years after that operation; the Clinton White House said it would last 3 or 4 weeks.  60 years after the ceasefire, US forces remain in Korea.  US forces are deployed around the world in various stability operations that have lasted decades.  What are we prepared to do in regard to Syria?  At the least we should expect that this operation will also ‘go sideways.’  Are we ready for that additional cost in manpower, material, weapons, and money?

The President is making the case that some things are of such grave concern that they warrant refocusing assets no matter the cost.  He is stating that some things are so important that they trump all – or at least most – other activities.  In short, he is stating that we must ‘get our priorities right.’  If that is the case, the corollary is that the federal government needs to be lean, and focused on those things that place the nation at risk.  The Congress should take this as a signal to take a hard look at not only the military but the entire federal government and start significant reductions and realignments in spending so that the nation has the capital and other assets it needs so that the President can adequately respond to emerging threats in a dangerous world. 

The President, Congress and the Pentagon need to stop making budgets and then fitting strategies into those budgets, and instead engage in a serious discussion about US goals, and the necessary plans to achieve those goals, and the force structure needed to execute those plans and then build accordingly.  The President has said we need to be able to act unilaterally: that represents a policy shift of truly massive proportions and signals a need for an A to Z review of US national security capabilities and forces.

Finally, Congress needs to ask how we got here; how a series of poor strategic decisions over the past 5 years, to include ignoring the Syrian civil war for 18 months, led us to the current situation.  We need to understand how that happened so that perhaps this particular set of mistakes won’t happen again.

It is critical that we get these – and other questions – fully answered.  More than two centuries ago Frederick the Great, the King of Prussia, a great general and a great political theoretician and writer, noted that ‘errors in tactics can be corrected in the next battle, but errors in strategy can only be corrected in the next war.’  The President wishes to commit the US to a war with Syria.  We had best be crystal clear as to goals and strategy before we enter that war or we will find, as Frederick noted, that we will be able to fix our mistake only at great cost in time, national treasure and lives.