Better Informed Comment: The Real War

Monday, May 13, 2013

The Empire Strikes Back!

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2013/May-13/216892-syrian-troops-take-full-control-of-strategic-town.ashx#axzz2T24iAkZQ

If you start piecing together the news reports, it does appear that Assad's forces have regained the upper hand.

That is not to say that he has won the civil war, but it does appear that the seemingly inexorable tide of rebel advances has ebbed and begun to recede.

What dos this mean? Well, it does not mean that Assad has won, or is winning. It does mean that there will be increasing pressures placed on the Arabs, the West, and the United States to step up aid to the rebels. It probably also means that the rebels who will rise to a position of leadership will be the most brutal--the Jihadist factions.

If you look at what Assad's friends are saying--the Iranians and the Russians--about a negotiated settlement, then the Syrian military's battlefield gains ought to be viewed not as a war winning effort, but as an attempt to coerce the rebels into talks that will allow Assad's power to survive in some fashion. The rebels are now fighting Assad's army, Hezbollah militia from Lebanon, and some Shi'ite Iraqi militia.

This only serves to raise the stakes for the US, and the Obama administration. If--IF--Assad holds on, his survival will be seen as a victory for the Iranians, his steadfast ally, and a clear defeat for the United States, the West (minus Russia), and its Sunni Arab partners.

Redlines aside, Obama has been clear that Assad has to go, just as Qaddafi had to go. And if Assad does not "go," then Obama's policy has failed. if you read Kerry's diplomatic efforts to, arm-in-arm with Russia, achieve a negotiated settlement, you could argue that the US is already willing to concede defeat.

That's not to argue that Obama/Kerry are wrong to pursue such a policy. They probably have concluded that leaving Assad in power is not as poor an outcome as overthrowing him and replacing him with a jihadist emirate! In other words, Obama's is realizing that his initial--he has to go policy--wasn't well thought out. So now he's trying to back that policy down and embrace an outcome that will incorporate the "will of the Syrian people" as part of a negotiated settlement.

The problem is, I don't think the rebels want a negotiated settlement that leaves Assad in power in any fashion, however limited. The jihadists certainly do not want that, and since have demonstrated that they are not afraid to take on the USSR or the US, I doubt very much that they will back down in the face of the Assad regime.

Syria and Water!

http://www.timesofisrael.com/lack-of-water-sparked-syrias-conflict-and-it-will-make-egypt-more-militant-too/#.UY4xAJLVdGc.email

This is a very interesting line of argument regarding Syria. I argues in my book The Last Crusade that Iraq was the best place for us to try to jumpt start something approaching a modern secular state becuase Iraq was the only Arab state in the Middle East that has both water and oil. Some have water, Egypt; some have oil, Saudi; but only Iraq has both.

When I was in graduate school, the population of Saudi Arabia was about 5 million, or less. Today it is 25 times that and can be sustained ONLY through massive and expensive imports of food and costly de-salinization efforts.

What will happen when the world begins to better exploit its shale oil and natural gas and requires fewer imports from the Gulf? How will the Saudis feed their population? Keep in mind that recently the US has been pumping more crude than Saudi Arabia!

If you look around a bit on the web you will also find stories about a brewing problem between Ethiopia and Egypt. The Ethiopians are planning on damming up some of the headwaters of the Nile. There are different estimates of how much damage that would do downstream in Egypt.