A Few Recent Publications

I have taken a short break from blogging.  However, I have a few publications elsewhere that might interest readers of my blog.  First, I have an article in the Small Wars Journal examining the factors that determine whether support for rebels can be a successful policy.  Here is its abstract.

Under what conditions can aid for rebels achieve policy objectives and avoid producing instability and humanitarian catastrophe?  I argue that three guidelines should be followed if aid is to be provided to rebels: the rebel factions should be united before aid is given, there should be only one source of aid, and the targeted state should lack the capability to draw upon extensive external support.  Looking at two cases where these conditions were lacking, Cuban support for the Guatemalan rebels in the 1950s and American support for the Afghan Mujahedeen, I find reason to believe that the lack of these conditions explains the severe costs for humanitarian objectives and stability.  Comparing these cases to two cases where the conditions were met, Cuban support for rebels in El Salvador and American support for the Northern Alliance after 9/11, I find reason to believe that where the conditions are met supporting rebels can achieve strategic objectives without causing instability or humanitarian catastrophe.

Second, I wrote a post for Southern Pulse on why Cuba should no longer be on the state sponsors of terrorism list.

I hope you enjoy these pieces, and hopefully I will have some new pieces here in the near future.

Tablet Ignores Arab Parties in Election Analysis and Why That’s Problematic

Liam Hoare has a piece in Tablet Magazine analyzing the potential Israeli governing coalitions based on recent polling.  His analysis is well done and interesting.  I do, though, have a complaint.  He does not address the so-called Arab parties*.  This is not the result of lack of polling data.  The site Hoare bases his numbers on includes projected Knesset seats for Hadash, Balad, and Ra’am Ta’al.  Together the original source gives these parties eleven seats.

One can of course argue that Hoare’s lack of analysis of these three parties is justified by the infinitesimally small (nonexistent) chance that Hadash, Balad, and Ra’am Ta’al will be in the coalition.  However, it is worth noting that those eleven seats plus another four or five from Meretz (Hoare’s Meretz count diverges from the source’s January 8 count) would be enough to drop Jewish Home from Hoare’s first case for scenario 5, creating the following coalition: Labor-Movement-Yesh Atid (37); Shas (10) Meretz (5) Hadash (4) Balad (4) Ra’am Ta’al (3), Total 63.**

Yes, this coalition is not going to happen.  Shas would not agree to it, nor would many in Labor-Movement-Yesh Atid.  However, is it actually less meaningful a proposed coalition than Labor-Movement-Yesh Atid (37); Jewish Home (14); Shas (11); UTJ (6); Meretz (4), which Hoare does list as possible though unlikely?  That second coalition would not only require a fundamental failure on the part of Netanyahu as a politician and a left wing willingness to accept the Jewish Home party, which is to the right of Likud, it would also require an unlikely rapprochement between Meretz and three religious parties.  The changes needed to see that coalition are as fanciful as those needed to see my proposed coalition.

The actual coalition will almost definitely be right wing – religious.  However, once one makes a decision to look at possibilities that would require tremendous changes in the state of Israeli politics, ignoring Hadash, Balad, and Ra’am Ta’al produces a intellectual dialogue that reproduces the oppressive conditions in which the people these parties represent are perpetually denied a serious role in governance.  Noam Sheizaf has eloquently discussed this issue regarding ignoring polling on Arab parties.  The level of imagination Hoare’s final scenarios require produces the same quandary.

*I say so-called Arab parties because it is a questionable descriptor.  Hadash is joint Arab-Jewish.  Also I feel uncomfortable calling them Arab parties when the fact that the other parties are Jewish parties is so often allowed to go unnoticed as the presumed universal.

** Hoare’s numbers for Shas also seem to diverge from the January 8 original source numbers.  I use the original source in creating my count.

Hope Not Despair Caused Syria’s Militarization

Yesterday in Foreign Policy, Stephen Zunes made the case against military intervention or support for rebels in Syria, arguing that militarized strategies have historically been less successful than strategies of nonviolence at overthrowing dictatorships as well as at establishing democratic governance.  Zunes argues that the militarization, according to him like most militarizations of nonviolent movements, was caused by despair:

Historically, when a nonviolent movement shifts to violence, it is a result of frustration, anger, or the feeling of hopelessness. Rarely is it done as a clear strategic choice. Indeed, if the opposition movement were organizing its resistance in a strategic way, with a logical sequencing of tactics and a familiarity with the history and dynamics of popular unarmed civil insurrection, they would recognize that it is usually a devastating mistake to shift to violence.

This hypothesis is problematic.  I would suggest, instead, that it was the hope for a Libya-style intervention and a quick end to conflict that motivated the militarization of the Syrian revolution.  The 2011 intervention in Libya signaled that the United States and other powers would militarily support revolutions against dictatorial regimes that opposed American interests.  I blogged about this here, citing Alan Kuperman’s theory of intervention as producing a moral hazard and thus encouraging further rebellion.  Kuperman provides convincing evidence that the rebellions in Kosovo and Bosnia were not the result of despair but hope for American intervention.  I argued that Syria provided a similar case, pointing to statements by key Syrian National Council leaders that showed a central role of the Libyan model in the decision to militarize.

In my piece, I noted that these statements might have simply been a reaction to a militarization that had already occurred for other reasons.  However, Zunes dates the militarization to Spring and Summer of 2012, closely fitting the time period in which the statements I cited occurred:

When the armed resistance escalated dramatically in 2012 after the failure of the cease-fire late in the spring and into the summer, it proved deleterious to the civil insurrection and dramatically increased the death toll. From May to August, the monthly death toll rose from 1322 to 5039 while the number of Friday demonstrations declined from 834 to 355. Subsequently, the weekly total has been well under 300. Indeed, despite claiming to defend the civilian population from the regime’s armed forces, they have only succeeded in fearfully increasing the civilian death toll.

If the militarization was the result of signals that the West or Arab states would intervene, it does not support a despair-based hypothesis.  Despair would have encouraged continued nonviolent struggle to avoid precisely the worrisome consequences of militarization Zunes points to.  Instead, it was an external shock to the system produced by external powers signaling the possibility of a quick route out of the stalemate through overwhelming force,that encouraged Syria’s rebels to make a strategic decision to militarize the rebellion.

Zunes’ treatment of the Syrian rebels’ military strategy as a guerrilla war reveals a further problem with his despair hypothesis.  As Stathis Kalyvas and Laia Balcells argue, Syria is not a guerrilla war but a conventional war, and conventional wars have shorter durations and lower casualties than guerrilla wars.  As Kalyvas and Balcells note, the conventional character was largely the result of the external support for the rebel militaries.  This differentiation cuts against Zunes’ use of statistics comparing violent and non-violent strategies without examining what type of war external support enabled.

The militarization of Syria’s revolution can certainly be blamed for raising the profiles of forces that do not bode well for future democratization, often because of their links to external forces.  It can also be blamed for bolstering forces that do not fit with American interests.  However, as a way to topple Assad, the decision to militarize the revolution appears to have been a strategic decision based in hope and not despair.  It may still turn out to have been a wrong-headed decision, but it was not based in despair, indiscipline, or the collapse of leadership, as Zunes argues.

The Chemical Weapons Red Line: Norms or Fear of Terrorist Takeover

Armin Rosen recently argued that the strict red line Obama has laid out against Syrian use of chemical weapons derives from a norm that somewhat oddly focuses on the tool that is used to kill rather than the actual deaths.  He writes:

Chemical weapons are almost universally understood to be an expedient for effecting massive amounts of human suffering, and nothing more. Reinforcing the international norm against them can be thought of as an end in itself, and it may help explain the Obama administration’s stance on Syria.

Still, any norm that focuses on the tools of destruction — rather than the political evils served by mass killings — misses the point. Galbraith seemed to sense this. “‘Most of those senators were concerned not with the Kurds but with the instrument of death, the chemical weapons,’” Galbraith tells Power. “‘I wasn’t concerned with the use of chemical weapons as such but with their use as a way of destroying the Kurdish people. These weapons were not any more evil than guns.’”

Rosen is almost certainly correct that this norm is an important, though strange, motivating factor in determining Obama’s red lines on Syria.  I, however, would suggest there’s another explanation.  The Obama administration wants to ensure that Syria’s chemical weapons do not fall into the hands of rebels and then terrorist groups.  Because of the very norms Rosen points to, the effect of chemical weapon proliferation to terrorist groups is more dangerous than the failure to control conventional weapons.

The red line against chemical weapons use not only functions to prevent use, but also to keep the chemical weapons under centralized control.  Currently, the weapons are guarded by elite units.  As they are readied for use, the level of central control is likely to diminish as Anthony Cordesman and Thomas Donnelly explain:

Anthony Cordesman, an analyst at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said in an interview with the Voice of America that those troops would have to battle the elite Syrian forces assigned to guard the chemical weapons sites.

Cordesman said most of those sites are “heavily defended” by Assad loyalists. He added that Syria’s sophisticated air defences also could pose a threat to an aerial commando strategy.

“There is no way you can move aircraft into the areas without being detected by radar. So even special forces raids could have serious problems just in getting to a facility undetected.”

Thomas Donnelly, a defence and security policy analyst for the American Enterprise Institute, said another challenge would be securing weapons that are not at the sites, but have been deployed to specific regime troops.

“As the weapons move from central storage facilities to units in the field, the military tasks grow and grow exponentially, just finding all those things in a timely way,” he said.

It is possible that the reason the norm and its defense in Syria seems strange, is that the United States is not making policy based on norms like responsibility to protect or against the use of chemical weapons, but on realist fears of threats to itself and allies from terrorists.

Give the Rebels a Chance, or Assad. Just Don’t Push Negotiations

Glenn Robinson has a piece in Foreign Policy today arguing that the United States should support a negotiated solution to the Syrian conflict rather than an outright rebel victory.  He writes:

In fact, the insurgents might be too good. Neither Syria nor the region would be well served by a decisive victory by either the Assad regime or by the opposition. Breathless supporters of Syria’s revolution need to be careful what they wish for. The most powerful elements of Syria’s armed opposition would almost certainly be no friend of liberal democracy were they to seize power for themselves. Consider this: The dissidents who brought down autocratic governments in Egypt and Tunisia, even the political Islamists among them, were far more politically liberal than what we see in Syria. And look at those countries now.

What, then? It is not fashionable to say so, but a negotiated outcome remains the best solution to end the killing and prevent the worst elements from either side ruling Syria. An outright opposition victory would likely produce a momentary air of euphoria before the steep decline toward autocracy and darkness begin.

I tend to agree with Robinson’s fear that a rebel victory will not produce a liberal or especially pro-American regime and that the more extreme members of the Syrian revolution, who also happen to be among the best armed and most experienced fighters, are likely to dominate post-war governance.

However, I am not convinced that a negotiated solution can resolve this conflict.  Even if there is a possibility of a negotiated solution, American support for it is unlikely to make the difference.  The key will be whether Assad can create stalemate conditions in which the rebels have no choice but to negotiate.  Wars do not end until the warring sides tire of war or one side is defeated.  The Syrian rebels have fought a brutal civil war against a brutal and oppressive regime.  They are unlikely to stop and a negotiated peace would just cover over the antagonisms that exist allowing them to persist.  Moreover, there is little reason to believe a negotiated solution could be enforced against those who refuse to join it.  The civil war would rage on only with slightly altered sides.

This is a case where Edward Luttwak’s article “Give War a Chance,” which I generally find morally and theoretically problematic, is right.  In it Luttwak writes:

Today cease-fires and armistices are imposed on lesser powers by multilateral agreement – not to avoid great-power competition but for essentially disinterested and indeed frivolous motives, such as television audiences’ revulsion at harrowing scenes of war.  But this, perversely, can systematically prevent the transformation of war into peace.

The best course for the United States to take is to step back and let the war run its course or possibly to provide assistance to one side to bring it to an end.  Trying to bridge these competing forces is a recipe for prolonged conflict that will further radicalize the fighters and likely turn them against the United States, which will be seen as trying to maintain the Assad regime.  The moment to seek a negotiated solution, if that was a preferable result, was before the rebels gained the upper hand.  Now it is too late.  Of course, rhetorical support for negotiations that don’t actually do anything may be an effective way of politically justifying allowing the war to run its course.

It Might Not Take Aliens: XCOM and Israelis and Arabs Fighting Together

Michael Peck has a piece in Foreign Policy titled “Alien War Brings Mideast Peace And other benefits of an extraterrestrial invasion.”  In it he looks at the game XCOM: Enemy Unknown in which council of nations defends themselves against an alien invasion.  Peck notes that in the game Saudi Arabian and Egyptian troops fight alongside Israeli troops.  Peck portrays this as a fanciful notion, writing “Such camaraderie seems as fanciful as warp drive and time travel. But if you can accept that Israelis and Arabs would rather kill aliens than each other, then you will discover that XCOM: Enemy Unknown is one of the best strategy games ever made.”  Peck concludes his piece this way, “Still, humanity does band together, if only hesitantly. The lion sleeps with the lamb, the Arab fights alongside the Israeli, the Chinese beside the Japanese. It took an alien invasion for this to happen. But if Earth does prevail in the war to save mankind, then perhaps the price was worth it.”  It seems that for Peck, the idea that Arab and Israeli would fight together is something that can only occur in the messianic times or in the wake of an alien invasion.

Yet, the possibility that Arab forces would fight alongside Israeli forces as shown in XCOM: Enemy Unknown has its precedents in real Middle Eastern history.  In September 1970, during Jordan’s struggle with Palestinian factions known as Black September, Syrian tanks invaded Jordan.  King Hussein responded to the Syrian threat by asking for American support, however, the request noted that Jordan would accept air support from any nation including Israel.  The US supported the concept of using Israeli airpower and considered supporting an Israeli ground action to expel the Syrians.  The threat of Israeli and American air support helped Jordan force Syria to withdraw.  Richard Mobley provides a good exploration of the incident in “U.S. Joint Military Contributions to Countering Syria’s 1970 Invasion of Jordan.”

Iran’s threat to the Gulf States may provoke a similar reaction.  In the Jerusalem Post, Oren Kessler noted that diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks showed support for an American strike on Iran among the Gulf States of Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.  While the possibility for overt military cooperation between the Gulf States and an Israeli strike is unlikely, Kessler cited Jonathan Schanzer of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and Ilan Berman, vice president of the American Foreign Policy Council, as saying that in the event that Israel did strike Iran, it could likely count on covert assistance from the Gulf States or at least that the states would look the other way.

The Israeli-Arab military cooperation in XCOM: Enemy Unknown is not a phenomena as fanciful as time travel or an event confined to the messianic times or an alien invasion.  Tensions between Israel and Arab states, often over-emphasized, are not enough to prevent cooperation when both parties see cooperation as necessary for state survival.  For Jordan in September 1970, the Syrians were enough to trigger such a situation.  The Gulf States may be close to such a situation with Iran.  It is hardly surprising that a threat as serious as an alien invasion would trigger military cooperation.

Calling for Voting Rights Rather than UN Recogniton Does Not Lead to Two States

In a column a few weeks ago before the vote in which the United Nations General Assembly recognized Palestine as an observer state, Jeffrey Goldberg argued that instead of seeking UN recognition, Mahmoud Abbas should call for voting rights as a strategy of obtaining independence:

There is, however, a strategy the Palestinians could implement immediately that would help move them toward independence: They could give up their dream of independence.

It’s a very simple idea. When Abbas goes before the UN, he shouldn’t ask for recognition of an independent state. Instead, he should say the following: “Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza 45 years ago, and shows no interest in letting go of the West Bank, in particular. We, the Palestinian people, recognize two things: The first is that we are not strong enough to push the Israelis out. Armed resistance is a path to nowhere. The second is that the occupation is permanent. The Israelis are here to stay. So we are giving up our demand for independence. Instead, we are simply asking for the vote. Israel rules our lives. We should be allowed to help pick Israel’s rulers.”

Reaction would be seismic and instantaneous. The demand for voting rights would resonate with people around the world, in particular with American Jews, who pride themselves on support for both Israel and for civil rights at home. Such a demand would also force Israel into an untenable position; if it accedes to such a demand, it would very quickly cease to be the world’s only Jewish-majority state, and instead become the world’s 23rd Arab-majority state. If it were to refuse this demand, Israel would very quickly be painted by former friends as an apartheid state.

This hypothesis is problematic.  As Jeffrey Goldberg, has shown through his own writing the response of many to Palestinian calls for voting rights and equality is not identification with Palestinian activists.  Responding to Saree Makdisi’s piece in the New York Times titled “If Not Two States, Then One,” Goldberg suggests that Makdisi is either “Polyannish or cynical.”  Goldberg further writes:

What is remarkable about Makdisi’s column is what is remarkable about all calls for a one-state solution: He writes as if a) the Jewish people do not deserve a state in even a part of their historic homeland; b) the Palestinians were never offered a state of their own (why can’t, just for once, an advocate of the one-state solution acknowledge the fact that the United Nations offered the Arabs their own state in Palestine in 1947, an offer their leaders rejected? Not to mention offers made to Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas?) and c) the one-state solution is actually a solution. Here is Makdisi’s view of the Jewish fate in what would become the Middle East’s 23rd Arab-majority country:

Those currently opposed to making the concessions necessary for a two state solution are likely to see a call for voting rights as a threat and further proof of Palestinian unwillingness to deal.

To be fair to Goldberg, his proposed strategy is not the same as Makdisi’s.  Goldberg imagines a Palestinian leadership that maintains the goal of independence while pursuing voting rights within one state while Makdisi views one state as a preferable solution.  This distinction is not enough to save Goldberg’s argument because it implies a certain duplicity or hypocrisy of Palestinian leadership calling for voting rights and abandoning the desire for independence while really still seeking independence.  Such a stance would likely be seen as a mere negotiating trick akin to the many times Abbas has threatened to resign or turn authority back over to the Israelis.  Furthermore, it is unclear what institutional forms would maintain the demand for independence or the capability to accept an independent state were it granted if steps like recognition at the United Nations are rejected.

Goldberg’s proposed strategy would also be incapable of mobilizing public support to participate in the nonviolent resistance needed to push the issue.  The lack of mobilization around Sari Nussibeh’s proposal that Palestinians accept civil but not political rights with the objective of that status forcing Israel to either extend political rights or independence through a similar dynamic to that Goldberg hypothesizes is telling.  Avner Inbar and Assaf Sharon’s review of Nussibeh’s What is a Palestinian State Worth identifies many of the issues with hypotheses of moral “shock therapy” and their downplaying of the essential role of political mobilization.

It is unlikely that calling for voting rights and forsaking the demand for independence would lead to a two state solution.  A more promising path lies through opening the way for international pressure on Israel to strike a deal with the West Bank Palestinian leadership and seek reintegration of Gaza.  Goldberg’s proposed strategy cuts against that possibility.

Alternatively, Palestinians could adopt a struggle for voting rights.  However, such a struggle would require a serious choice to seek one state and deal with the thorny issues a one state solution poses.  It should not be treated as a change in strategy, it would be a fundamental change in the objectives of the Palestinian national movement.

New at Southern Pulse: On Internet Shutdown Risk in South America

I have a new piece at Southern Pulse exploring the risk of countrywide Internet blackouts in South America based on Renesys’ report.  The takeaway is that while most of South America is relatively protected from Internet blackouts, the risk in Guyana, French Guiana, and Suriname is higher and more similar to Caribbean states than the rest of South America.

My Latest on the UN Vote and Palestine at Southern Pulse

I have a new piece up at Southern Pulse taking a look at Israel’s relations with Latin-America following the United Nations vote that recognized Palestine as an non-member observer state.  I have blogged on this issue before here.  My general take is that Latin America like much of the world has turned against the occupation but remains interested in strong ties with Israel and also remains interested in a two state solution, stances that were compatible with the Palestinian UN bid which functioned within a two-state framework.

Perverse Incentives: How American Policy Risks Militarizing the Middle East

As the reverberations of the Arab Spring continue to affect Middle Eastern stability, the United States has attempted to manage the situation and maintain its leverage.  Unfortunately American policies may be encouraging further militarization of the Arab Spring.  Here I lay out two potentially dangerous trends in the American reaction.

First, there’s a risk of creating moral hazard through intervention.  The intervention in Libya, even if successful in producing a stable pro-western regime, may have incentivized rebels and protesters in the Middle East to use violent means in the belief that the United States, other western powers, or the Arab League will back them up.  In his 2008 paper, Alan Kuperman suggested that international interventions produce just such a moral hazard, citing the cases of Bosnia and Kosovo.

There is some reason to believe that the Libyan intervention had such an effect in Syria.  Syrian National Council head Abdulbaset Sieda has called for the Arab League to back a solution modeled on Libya.  Radwan Ziadeh, a member of the SNC made similar comments that suggest a reliance on the possibility of international support or intervention in early 2012:

ELEANOR HALL: So can this escalation of violence in Syria be stopped without the sort of international intervention that occurred in Libya.

RADWAN ZIADEH: No without, without international intervention Bashar al-Assad will not stop the killings. Without such kind of action enforcing no-fly zone in Syria zone, I don’t think that Bashar al-Assad will understand the message and stop the violence.

The Christian Science Monitor even reported on Free Syrian Army soldiers stating a preference for Romney over Obama based on their perceived likelihoods of arming the rebels.

Of course, these comments may simply reflect the situation after militarization occurred for other reasons, for example as a response to Assad’s brutal violence.  To be sure an examination of earlier views on intervention would be needed.  However, the Libyan intervention seems to, at least now, be influencing the rebel decisions regarding the use of violence.

The danger may become more serious, as Western nations begin to see arming rebels and other forms of support as possibilities and stray from their earlier lack of will.  Even if intervention or arming rebels can work in Syria, a far from certain assertion, the signal of increased support may cause violence to break out where it will not be workable.  Even if the violence does break out where intervention can work, there are only so many interventions the US can engage in with a poor economy and while facing an enemy, Al Qaeda, pursuing an exhaustion strategy.

The second risk is produced by the United States’ avoidance of the Palestine issue.  This case of the United States creating perverse incentives is much clearer.  The United States has cut down its support for the Palestinian Authority, allowed Israel to continue settlement construction without triggering pressure, and blocked the Palestinian bid for statehood at the United Nations.  The result: an increase in popularity for Hamas, whose violence at least appears to be obtaining results, and a collapse in PA legitimacy.  Others have addressed this issue more eloquently than me, so instead of continuing I’ll just point you to Yousef Munayyer’s take and the discussion of the issue on Up with Chris Hayes.

Moreover, Palestine is arguably only the most visible and resonant of the cases where the United States may be encouraging violent protest by sustaining unrepresentative regimes or dictatorships.  Yemen and Bahrain are commonly cited as other cases.

There are good reasons to support the current American strategy in the Middle East.  At the very least it has significantly set back Al Qaeda’s power and reduced the American footprint in the Middle East.  It may still result in a broad stabilization of the Middle East.  However, such a stabilization is more likely if the United States takes care that it does not signal that violence is a more effective strategy in Middle Eastern politics than non-violence whether it signals such through intervention and arming rebels or by neglecting peaceful protest.