Russia Is Indeed Back . . .

. . . thanks in large part to diplomatic bungling by the Obama administration over Syria. Ariel Cohen points out that the ramifications of the administration's errors go far beyond what will happen in Syria:

In what appears as yet another strategic blunder, Obama even elected to forego a binding UN Security Council resolution on Syrian disarmament under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, which allows for enforcement, while Putin may hit the geopolitical jackpot.

If the disarmament initiative succeeds, Obama will “owe” Putin. America will be enticed to forget quickly the damage caused by the NSA and CIA defector Edward Snowden, who received asylum in Russia. America will remain mum as a Russian court has sentenced anticorruption crusader and whistleblower Alexei Navalny. Moscow is rife with rumors about preparations for the third trial of jailed oil tycoon and political opponent Mikhail Khodorkovsky. It is equally unlikely that Russia’s ambitious plans to expand the Eurasian Union to include Armenia and Ukraine into the Customs Union will meet a vigorous U.S. response.

Obama may not realize that Putin, a former KGB recruiting officer, seems to have played him like a violin. Putin has demonstrated that he is capable of stopping the world’s only superpower from using force—making him “the go to” man, to whom many on the U.S. blacklist will run to seek protection.

Putin will also have demonstrated that Russia, despite being seven times smaller than the U.S. economically, and weaker militarily, is capable of gaining impressive geopolitical results even when dealt a poor hand. As the military operation against Assad is postponed, Putin has increased the chances of the pro-Iranian regime’s survival, and possibly ensured the continued presence of a modest Russian naval facility in Tartus.

Moscow also has a growing interest in a Shia strategic belt extending from Lebanon via Syria and Iraq to Iran, as it prevents Sunni radicals from flooding into the North Caucasus and Central Asia—Russia’s soft underbelly.

Moscow also sent a signal that a U.S. military operation against the Iranian nuclear program may not happen—without the UN Security Council—i.e., the Kremlin’s—sanction. And that sanction will not be forthcoming.

Not bad for a week’s work.

Recall (again) that one of the reasons given for re-electing the president in 2012 was that he is supposedly a much better geopolitical chess player than that bumbler, Mitt Romney, who had the effrontery to tell us that Russia's interests don't exactly line up with our own. How is that argument looking now?

Deeds. Not Words. Deeds.

Ray Takeyh is right on the money when he reminds us what we should expect from Hassan Rohani before we go around calling him "a reformer":

Rouhani's attempt to refashion Iran's image and temper its rhetoric should be welcomed. After eight years of Ahmadinejad provocations that often unhinged the international community, a degree of self-restraint is admirable. However, judge Tehran by its conduct and not its words.

It is not enough for Rouhani to condemn the use of chemical weapons in Syria. Is he prepared to withdraw the Revolutionary Guard contingents that have done much to buttress Assad's brutality?

It is not sufficient for Rouhani to speak of transparency; he must curb Iran's troublesome nuclear activities and comply with the U.N. Security Council resolutions.

And it is not enough for Rouhani to speak of a tolerant society unless he is prepared to free his many former comrades and colleagues who are languishing in prisons under false charges.

Rouhani's reliability has to be measured by his actions, not by his speeches or tweets.

There are many out there who are willing to believe that Rohani is a reformer based solely on cosmetic gestures and somewhat more mild rhetoric--especially when compared to Ahmadinejad. These people might very well be setting themselves up for a major disappointment. 

Devastating Criticism for the Obama Administration on Syria

From two of the administration's former defense secretaries, and from its former acting director of Central Intelligence:

President Obama’s first two defense secretaries publicly questioned the administration’s handling of the Syrian crisis on Tuesday night and expressed skepticism about whether Russia can broker a deal to remove Syria’s chemical weapons.

In a joint appearance in Dallas, both former Pentagon chiefs, Robert M. Gates and Leon E. Panetta, were critical of Mr. Obama for asking Congress to authorize the use of force against Syria in retaliation over its use of chemical weapons. But they disagreed on whether military action would be an effective response. Mr. Gates said Mr. Obama’s proposed military strike was a mistake, while Mr. Panetta said it was a mistake not to carry out an attack.

“My bottom line is that I believe that to blow a bunch of stuff up over a couple days, to underscore or validate a point or a principle, is not a strategy,” Mr. Gates said during a forum at Southern Methodist University. “If we launch a military attack, in the eyes of a lot of people we become the villain instead of Assad,” he added, referring to President Bashar al-Assad of Syria.

Mr. Gates, the only cabinet member from the administration of George W. Bush whom Mr. Obama asked to stay, said missile strikes on Syria “would be throwing gasoline on a very complex fire in the Middle East.”

[. . .]

Mr. Panetta, also speaking at the forum, said the president should have kept his word after he had pledged action if Syria used chemical weapons.

“When the president of the United States draws a red line, the credibility of this country is dependent on him backing up his word,” Mr. Panetta said.

“Once the president came to that conclusion, then he should have directed limited action, going after Assad, to make very clear to the world that when we draw a line and we give our word,” then “we back it up,” Mr. Panetta said.

[. . .]

Another former high-ranking Obama administration official, Michael J. Morell, who recently retired as the deputy director of the C.I.A., also expressed skepticism about the negotiations brokered by Russia.

“I think this is the Syrians playing for time,” Mr. Morell told Foreign Policy magazine in an interview published Tuesday on its Web site. “I do not believe that they would seriously consider giving up their chemical weapons.”

Mr. Gates said he doubted whether President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia was sincere in his efforts to broker a deal, and said he was skeptical that the Syrian government would disarm. He said it was absurd that Syria needed days or weeks to identify the location and size of its chemical weapons arsenal, and he suggested that the timetable should be an ultimatum of 48 hours.

When asked whether the West should trust Mr. Putin, Mr. Gates said, “Are you kidding me?”

Obviously, I am with Gates on whether military action should have been threatened or taken over Syria, but Panetta's point is not without merit; the Obama administration looks non-credible for having backed down--especially given the entirely appropriate skepticism expressed for the Putin plan. It would have been nice if the administration had reached out to Gates, Panetta and Morell prior to signing on to the Russian plan--and it would have been nice if John Kerry had not given the Russians an opening to begin with by being clumsy enough to answer a hypothetical question. Too bad that no one from the administration saw fit to engage Gates, Panetta or Morell in the discussion.

Speaking of the difference between former and current Obama administration officials, are those who championed the confirmation of Chuck Hagel as defense secretary still glad that he is in the cabinet, given his endorsement of the awful Russian plan and his disagreement with Gates, Panetta and Morell (a disagreement the New York Times story linked above references)?

Our Remarkably Unfabulous Middle East Policy

One of the best--and most depressing--analyses that I have seen regarding the recent Russian-American deal on Syria:

The United States and Russia have now averted U.S. military action against the Syrian regime for Bashar al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons against civilians. Is the agreement reached by Secretary Kerry and Foreign Minister Lavrov on September 9 a diplomatic triumph for the Obama administration, or was it, as retired British ambassador Charles Crawford called it, “the worst day for U.S. and wider Western diplomacy since records began?”

While perhaps not as bad as Ambassador Crawford suggests, we agree that the outcome is one of the worst defeats for U.S. foreign policy in decades. We write as two scholars and former national-security practitioners who agree on almost nothing else regarding Syria: one is a traditional realist who opposed military action against Assad, and the other is a recent arrival in the camp of the post-Cold War liberal internationalists who supported striking the Syrian regime. We come not only from diverging views but also from different academic disciplines (history and political science), and while both of us have served in positions relevant to American foreign and security policy, we speak on our own behalf, especially since we ourselves are otherwise so deeply divided about U.S. intervention overseas.

We share, however, a background in the study of Russia, and it is here that we find the outcome of the Syrian crisis to be so disastrous. For nearly seven decades, American efforts in the Middle East have been based on a bipartisan consensus—one of the few to be found in U.S. foreign policy—aimed at limiting Moscow’s influence in that region. This is a core interest of American foreign policy: it reflects the strategic importance of the region to us and to our allies, as well as the historical reality Russia has continually sought clients there who would oppose both Western interests and ideals. In less than a week, an unguarded utterance by a U.S. Secretary of State has undone those efforts. Not only is Moscow now Washington’s peer in the Middle East, but the United States has effectively outsourced any further management of security problems in the region to Russian president Vladimir Putin.

A halfway competent United States Congress, interested in doing its job, would call hearings and call out Secretary Kerry and others in the administration--including the president himself--for undermining a key American foreign policy interest. Oh, and perhaps newspapers like the New York Times and the Washington Post should come out with editorials demanding the resignations of people like Secretary Kerry, and anyone else who sold President Obama on the idea that accepting increased Russian influence in the Middle East is a good thing.

Shadi Hamid on the Obama Administration's Diplomatic Non-Victory

Scathing, and entirely accurate:

A deal with Russia on chemical weapons may be a "win" for President Obama but only in the narrowest sense. He managed to avoid a war he desperately did not want. But with the near-obsessive focus on chemical-weapons use, the core issues have been pushed to the side. These were always more or less the same -- a regime bent on killing and terrorizing its own people and a brutal civil war spilling over into the rest of the region, fanning sectarian strife and destabilizing Syria's neighbors.

For his part, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is effectively being rewarded for the use of chemical weapons, rather than "punished" as originally planned. He has managed to remove the threat of U.S. military action while giving very little up in return. Obscured in the debate of the past few weeks is that chemical weapons were never central to the Syrian regime's military strategy. It doesn'tneed to use chemical weapons. In other words, even if the regime does comply with inspections (which could drag on for months if not years), it will have little import for the broader civil war, which Assad remains intent on winning.

If anything, Assad finds himself in a stronger position. Now, he can get away with nearly anything -- as long as he sticks to using good old conventional weapons, which, unlike the chemical kind, are responsible for the vast majority of the more than 100,000 deaths so far in the civil war. Let's say Assad intensifies the bombardment of villages and cities using aircraft and artillery. What if there are more summary executions, more indiscriminate slaughter? What we have already seen is terrible, of course, but it is not the worst Assad can do with conventional weapons.

Assad and his Russian backers played on Obama's most evident weakness, exploiting his desire to find a way -- any way -- out of military action. There was a threat of military force, but it was a weak and not entirely credible one, and this has only been further confirmed by the events of the last few weeks. Assad is still in power, prosecuting his war. Before the "deal," Assad had to at least worry about the possibility of military intervention and modulate his daily kill rate accordingly.

Little--if anything--has been accomplished by this deal. Assad will continue to lead Syria, he and the Russians will drag out any process regarding the inspection and elimination of chemical weapons, and as Hamid points out, the Obama administration will have neither the will nor the backing to put the military option back on the table. The United States has seen itself drawn into a conflict in which it had no strategic interest whatsoever, and its diplomatic aims in that conflict have not been achieved. I am glad that there will be no war, but war should have been abjured with the pronouncement that at the end of the day, the United States had no dog in the Syrian fight. Instead, the Obama administration rushed headlong into the middle of a conflict, rashly threatened military action, realized only later that it did not want a war, signaled that realization to everyone else, and accepted a bad deal in order to avoid military conflict with the Assad regime. It is difficult to imagine a worse outcome.

Quote of the Day

It is now clear that Snowden was not focused on unearthing for public debate only selected matters that raise issues of privacy and that ought to be debated. He instead was, like his contemporary Bradley Manning, engaged in wholesale compromising of any secrets he could get his hands (or his keyboard) on, consequences be damned. He was conducting an unrestricted attack on U.S. government information security. Perhaps he and Manning exhibit a naïve belief that secrecy is not necessary for conducting programs of foreign policy and national security. But traitors are not all sophisticated; some are naïve.

--Paul Pillar on Edward Snowden. And here is an alternative quote of the day from the same piece:

It is well past time to discard the notion that Snowden wasn't doing something terribly wrong because he was not working all along, in classic spy-novel fashion, as an agent of a foreign government. For one thing, foreign governments (and terrorist groups) read U.S. newspapers. For another, when Snowden went to Moscow he put himself at the mercy of the Russian government. When he was given permission to stay in Russia, it could be assumed that anything he had on whatever laptop or thumb drive he had with him came into the possession of the Russian intelligence services. Given his earlier stop in Hong Kong, when he also was looking for help in where to go, probably something similar happened with the Chinese. In short, Snowden's actions entailed bushels of U.S. secrets being given to Russia and China. There are various terms that can be applied to that, but it certainly isn't “whistle-blowing.”

I suppose that it is worth noting that the last two paragraphs of Pillar's piece are really good too.

Quick Links on Syria

In no particular order . . .

  • This is what results when a foreign leader struts after thoroughly outwitting and outmaneuvering an American president. Yes, the Putin editorial is hypocritical in the extreme (was United Nations permission requested by the Putin regime before Russian forays into Chechnya or Georgia?). Yes, it is replete with falsehoods--and the fact that the New York Times allowed it to be published anyway says something about the Times's editorial standards. But for those who wondered whether the Times allows itself to be used as a medium for transnational taunting between world leaders, you now have your answer in the affirmative. 
  • I suppose that the good thing about the Syria fracas is that it has helped re-engage the American people on the issue of foreign policy. Who knows? Perhaps we can look forward to a time when foreign policy, international diplomacy and statecraft become major campaign issues during election season.
  • This story informs us that "the CIA has been delivering light machine guns and other small arms to Syrian rebels for several weeks, following President Barack Obama's decision to arm the rebels." It also informs us that "in the northeastern province of Hassakeh, clashes pitting Kurdish fighters against members of the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front and the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant in the past two days killed 13 Kurdish gunmen and 35 militants." So, armed rebel groups are fighting other armed rebel groups, some of which are Islamic fundamentalist militants related to al Qaeda. Query: How do we know that the weapons that we are providing to "Syrian rebels" don't fall into the hands of the wrong kind of "rebels"?

Going from Bad to Worse (Syria Edition)

I missed the president's speech on Syria, but looking through it, I can't find anything that makes me feel more confident in the White House's handling of the situation. Chemical weapons are awful and horrendous things, but I don't see any rationale for making the use of chemical weapons the trigger for a possible American intervention, especially since before the use of these weapons, we've known that "[o]ver a hundred thousand people have been killed," and that "[m]illions have fled" Syria. It seems to me that we have had a monumental humanitarian catastrophe on our hands even before the use of chemical weapons. Why didn't we intervene before that catastrophe got worse, before chemical weapons were used? Other than telling us that "we cannot resolve someone else’s civil war through force, particularly after a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan," the president doesn't explain why humanitarian catastrophes brought about without chemical weapons are somehow less deserving of international attention than are humanitarian catastrophes brought about with chemical weapons.

The president tells us that "[i]f we fail to act, the Assad regime will see no reason to stop using chemical weapons," and that in addition, "other tyrants will have no reason to think twice about acquiring poison gas and using them." But what reason do they have to stop now? Will the "unbelievably small" consequences that the Assad regime might have to face somehow deter the regime, or "other tyrants"? Will the fact that a coalition of the willing that is smaller, less coalesced and certainly less willing than its predecessor coalition--along with possible Russian assistance that will help Syria replace bombed assets--help deter the Assad regime, or "other tyrants"? We are told that if we do not intervene, fighting might possibly spill "beyond Syria’s borders," which would mean that "these weapons could threaten allies like Turkey, Jordan and Israel." This raises some questions:

  1. How and why do we think that fighting might spill "beyond Syria's borders"? I have read my Clausewitz and I know that war is difficult to control, but why do we think that a civil war might possibly spread to other countries? By what particular mechanism will spillage occur?
  2. Who exactly will "threaten allies like Turkey, Jordan and Israel"? The Assad regime? If so, they would be fools to do so; such an act would directly bring American national security interests into the picture and spell the regime's doom. Seeing as how it is not in the regime's interests to destroy itself with so brazen and militaristic an act, one rather doubts that they will do so. The Syrian rebels? If so, why are we potentially acting to help them?

There are, of course, no answers to these questions in the president's speech. But the president goes on to tell us that

. . . a failure to stand against the use of chemical weapons would weaken prohibitions against other weapons of mass destruction and embolden Assad’s ally, Iran, which must decide whether to ignore international law by building a nuclear weapon or to take a more peaceful path.

Look, Iran wants nuclear power. We all know that. The Iranians have wanted nuclear power since the shah's time. Given this history, how seriously can anyone take the administration's claim that Assad's use of chemical weapons will encourage the Iranians to get nuclear weapons, when history plainly shows that Iran has not waited for the Assad regime's cue in order to work to obtain nuclear power?

The president goes on to promise "targeted strikes," and swears up and down that the campaign will not be "open-ended," or "prolonged," which is just another way of assuring the Assad regime that if it hunkers down, it will survive any American attack and that once the attacks are finished, the regime can go ahead and continue to gas opponents. How this is expected to constitute deterrence is anyone's guess.

Later on, we get this:

Other questions involve the dangers of retaliation. We don’t dismiss any threats, but the Assad regime does not have the ability to seriously threaten our military. Any other -- any other retaliation they might seek is in line with threats that we face every day. Neither Assad nor his allies have any interest in escalation that would lead to his demise. And our ally Israel can defend itself with overwhelming force, as well as the unshakable support of the United States of America.

If this is the case, then why worry that fighting might possibly spill "beyond Syria’s borders," which would mean that "these weapons could threaten allies like Turkey, Jordan and Israel"? If "[n]either Assad nor his allies have any interest in escalation that would lead to his demise," why do we think that there may be spillage? The president plainly believes that Assad won't encourage or bring about such spillage and if there are elements in the Syrian opposition that might encourage or bring about such spillage, then we shouldn't be helping them, should we? And if "our ally Israel can defend itself with overwhelming force, as well as the unshakable support of the United States of America," then doesn't that mean that spillage--while potentially a serious issue--is one that we can handle without the use of preemptive airstrikes that are too weak to accomplish anything in the first place?

I chuckled a little bit when the president said that "al-Qaida will only draw strength in a more chaotic Syria if people there see the world doing nothing to prevent innocent civilians from being gassed to death." I presume that he would have no problem with the following very similar statements:

  • "Al Qaeda will only draw strength in a more chaotic Iraq if people see the world doing nothing to prevent innocent civilians from being gassed to death."
  • "Al Qaeda will only draw strength in a more chaotic Iraq if people see the world doing nothing to prevent innocent civilians from being persecuted, tortured and executed for their political beliefs."
  • "Al Qaeda will only draw strength in a more chaotic Afghanistan if people see the world doing nothing to prevent innocent civilians from being persecuted, tortured and executed for their political beliefs."

I had no idea that the president is secretly a fan of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He must be, because similar logic applies to both countries. You learn something new everyday.

The latest development in the Syrian sitzkrieg is that John Kerry, our secretary of state, stepped in it recently:

This, apparently, is how diplomacy happens these days: Someone makes an off-hand remark at a press conference and triggers an international chain reaction that turns an already chaotic and complex situation completely on its head, and gives everyone a sense that, perhaps, this is the light at the end of the indecision tunnel. 

Speaking in London next to British Foreign Secretary William Hague on Monday, Secretary of State John Kerry said that perhaps the military strike around which the administration has been painfully circling for weeks could be avoided if Bashar al-Assad can "turn over every single bit of his chemical weapons to the international community in the next week. Turn it over, all of it, without delay, and allow a full and total accounting for that.” 

The fact that Kerry immediately followed with, “But he isn’t about to do it, and it can’t be done, obviously,” didn't seem to bother anyone. (Probably because they were focusing on his other slip-up: calling the promised strikes "unbelievably small.")

The Russians immediately jumped on the impromptu proposal, calling Kerry to check if he was serious before going live with their proposal to lean on Syria. An hour later, they trotted out Syria's foreign minister, Walid al-Mouallem, who said he too was down with the proposal, which was a strange way to get the Syrians to finally admit they even had chemical weapons to begin with. Before long, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon, the English, and the French were all on board, too.

Meanwhile, back in Washington, the White House was just as surprised as anyone. Asked if this was a White House plan that Kerry had served up in London, Deputy National Security Advisor Tony Blinken was unequivocal. "No, no, no," he said. "We literally just heard about this as you did some hours ago."

So that's good. At least everyone's on the same page.

Read the whole thing. While reading, be sure to remember that John Kerry once wanted to be president. Probably still does. Anyone want to tell me how easy it will be to (a) stop a civil war; and (b) send in an international force that removes all chemical weapons before (c) announcing to civil war participants that it's okay for them to shoot at each other again? Or will we just not bother with (a)? As Julia Ioffe notes, this proposal--and its possible embrace--mean that "Moscow and Damascus have all the time in the world, and the Kremlin, which has never met a legal norm it couldn't waltz around, will quibble and hair-split and insist that this is all done legally—whatever that means in Moscow." The Obama administration has officially been bamboozled out of its ability to launch "unbelievably small" strikes against the Syrian regime, which takes some doing, if you ask me.

If all of this is not bad enough for you, read Colum Lynch:

A day after President Obama expressed hope of a "breakthrough" on Syria's chemical weapons, Britain, France, and United States clashed on Tuesday with Russia over the terms of a plan that would place Syria's chemical weapons under international supervision and require Syria to join the international Chemical Weapons Convention.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov dubbed a U.S.-backed French initiative threatening possible military action against Syria "unacceptable." The plan to monitor Syria's chemical weapons "can work only if we hear that the American side and all those who support the United States in this sense reject the use of force," Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a television address.

The Russian stance left in disarray Western plans to establish a legally binding inspection regime, backed by the threat of force. The move also raised questions about whether a diplomatic breakthrough welcomed by President Obama is still in reach. Yet Security Council diplomats said that Russia's abrupt decision on Tuesday to drop its demand for an emergency session of the U.N. Security Council suggested there was still hope of diplomatic progress.

In an effort to overcome Russian opposition, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry plans to travel to Geneva to meet on Thursday with Lavrov. American, British, and French diplomats, meanwhile, pressed ahead here at the United Nations with efforts to refine the French U.N. Security Council resolution condemning the Syrian government and placing Syria's chemical weapons program "under international control" in preparation for their destruction.

If they succeed in gaining passage of their resolution, they will give the United Nations a new reason to do business with President Assad. The senior Arab diplomat said, "This all reminds me of Iraq, when Kofi Annan said he has a partner in Saddam Hussein," who then spent years in a cat-and-mouse game with U.N. weapons inspectors. "Do we know we have a partner in Bashar al-Assad?"

All of which means that the proper response to the question posed by the title of Lynch's column is "yes." But hey, let's "trust the Russians." What could possibly go wrong with that plan?

Finally, to close out this very long post, let's take a trip down memory lane. Somewhere, Mitt Romney laughs.

The Latest on Syria

Some links:

The Rush to Feel-Good Belligerency

Some more useful links analyzing our seeming willingness to get involved in a completely unnecessary war:

  • Once upon a time, Barack Obama inveighed against unilateralism and thought that getting United Nations approval for American military actions overseas would be a good idea. Nowadays? Not so much.
  • Even if we bomb Syria, Russia might "replace any military assets the U.S. destroys in a strike." Assuming no Russian interference whatsoever, our strikes would be of limited value. But if the Russians work to help the Syrians replace bombed assets, our ability to change the situation on the ground for the better might be even further reduced. And are we really willing to get into a proxy war with the Russians in a conflict where no American national security interests whatsoever are at stake?
  • Seriously? I mean, who actually thought that this enterprise would bear fruit?
  • Once again, it is worth noting that the new coalition of the willing is less coalesced and less willing than its predecessor coalition.
  • Searching for fourteen missing people is going to require some big milk cartons.

Before Syria, There Was Libya

As we contemplate a new Obamaesque military adventure, it is perhaps useful to remind ourselves how the old one is shaking out:

A little under two years ago, Philip Hammond, the Defence Secretary, urged British businessmen to begin “packing their suitcases” and to fly to Libya to share in the reconstruction of the country and exploit an anticipated boom in natural resources.

Yet now Libya has almost entirely stopped producing oil as the government loses control of much of the country to militia fighters.

Mutinying security men have taken over oil ports on the Mediterranean and are seeking to sell crude oil on the black market. Ali Zeidan, Libya’s Prime Minister, has threatened to “bomb from the air and the sea” any oil tanker trying to pick up the illicit oil from the oil terminal guards, who are mostly former rebels who overthrew Muammar Gaddafi and have been on strike over low pay and alleged government corruption since July.

As world attention focused on the coup in Egypt and the poison gas attack in Syria over the past two months, Libya has plunged unnoticed into its worst political and economic crisis since the defeat of Gaddafi two years ago. Government authority is disintegrating in all parts of the country putting in doubt claims by American, British and French politicians that Nato’s military action in Libya in 2011 was an outstanding example of a successful foreign military intervention which should be repeated in Syria.

In an escalating crisis little regarded hitherto outside the oil markets, output of Libya’s prized high-quality crude oil has plunged from 1.4 million barrels a day earlier this year to just 160,000 barrels a day now. Despite threats to use military force to retake the oil ports, the government in Tripoli has been unable to move effectively against striking guards and mutinous military units that are linked to secessionist forces in the east of the country.

Libyans are increasingly at the mercy of militias which act outside the law. Popular protests against militiamen have been met with gunfire; 31 demonstrators were shot dead and many others wounded as they protested outside the barracks of “the Libyan Shield Brigade” in the eastern capital Benghazi in June.

Though the Nato intervention against Gaddafi was justified as a humanitarian response to the threat that Gaddafi’s tanks would slaughter dissidents in Benghazi, the international community has ignored the escalating violence. The foreign media, which once filled the hotels of Benghazi and Tripoli, have likewise paid little attention to the near collapse of the central government.

This is the part where I am supposed to recite the definition of insanity. But I'm betting that you already know it by now. Too bad the White House doesn't.

A Folly We Are Determined to Commit

I am pleased that President Obama has decided to seek congressional approval prior to using military force in Syria. One does not know whether the president will go ahead and use force in Syria even if Congress disapproves, but at the very least, if he does so, he should be all alone in the endeavor.

Unfortunately, it would appear that some in the Republican leadership have decided not to leave the president alone. Both Eric Cantor and John Boehner have decided to give the president's Syria adventure their backing, and presumably, they will help the White House round up votes for a military mission that won't change a thing on the ground, that Assad knows he can ride out (because we have shouted from the rooftops that it will be limited in scope), and that is being embarked upon primarily in order to make us feel like we have tried to do something in order to stop the bloodshed in Syria. I am glad that Mitch McConnell remains skeptical--though I fear that at some point, even his skepticism will give way to what may at the very least be a reluctant endorsement--but the congressional Republican leadership failed to uniformly disapprove of what is very likely to be a military/foreign policy misadventure, one with only one ally--France--and not "dozens" of them. George W. Bush's "coalition of the willing" was much more coalesced, much more willing, and certainly larger than Barack Obama's is.

Just as much of the congressional Republican leadership deserves to be taken to task for its decision to endorse the Syria misadventure, much of the center-right punditocracy class deserves a trip to the woodshed as well. Jennifer Rubin seems to think that people who recognize that the United States has no strategic interest in intervening in Syria are "isolationists." This is entirely silly. Refusing to enter the Syrian civil war has nothing whatsoever to do with telling Bashar Assad to kill as many people as he wants. It has nothing to do with telling other dictators that they can feel free to use chemical weapons as well. Rather, it has to do with the fact that the United States has no strategic interest in entering the Syrian civil war and that it has no good way in which to bring about a positive change in Syria without possibly putting boots on the ground. And as that is the case, it is futile to waste time, materiel, and possibly lives in bombing the Syrian regime and its facilities for two or three days--and no more, as we have repeatedly reminded Assad--just so that we can pat ourselves on the back and claim that "we're not isolationists." Incidentally, last I saw, many of the people opposing the Syria misadventure are perfectly content to remain in NATO, like engage in an international liberalized trade regime, and would have been willing to continue to engage militarily in Afghanistan and Iraq, where we actually do have national security interests at stake. I count myself among that group. Am I and are people like me still "isolationists"?

Bret Stephens--whose writing I normally like--also sounds the alarm about "isolationists," or "Robert Taft Republicans," though at least he is kind enough to admit that not all Republicans who oppose intervention in Syria are "isolationists." Still, the use of "Robert Taft Republicans" is silly, because it suggests a facile comparison between people who see no reason whatsoever to engage militarily in Syria, and Republicans of decades past who opposed intervening in World War II, engaging in NATO, and launching the Marshall Plan. The Stephensian argument appears to be as follows:

If (a), then (b) and (c)

where (a) is "opposing intervention in Syria," (b) is "opposing entry into World War II," and (c) is "opposing participation in NATO and the Marshall Plan." No one really has to make the argument that just because one adopts (a), one automatically becomes the intellectual descendant of those who adopted (b) and (c) back in the day, right? No one really has to make the argument that just because one adopts (a), one would have adopted (b) and (c) if one could travel back in time, do we? Because if time really does have to be taken to make that argument to the masses and to reject Bret Stephens's faulty logic, then I despair for humanity.

It's bad enough that we appear to be committing to a military mission that will be useless at best, and will set back our tactical and strategic objectives at worst. It is even worse that we are doing it with transparently bad logic and bad arguments as our justification.

Some More Stray Thoughts on Syria

In no particular order:

  • Unless there is some serious head-faking going on--and I doubt that there is--maybe it's not such a great idea for our government to leak its operational plans. Of course, the leaking shouldn't surprise us; the Obama administration continues to believe, apparently, that telling national security secrets out of school is a bad thing unless it is being done to make the president look good in the eyes of the general public.
  • Like all good dissents, this one will likely turn into a majority opinion relatively soon.
  • All of the sudden, illegal wars are all the rage. I am shocked--shocked!--to contemplate that this might have something to do with a Democratic president getting the kind of pass no Republican president would get in similar circumstances.

And Now, Military Action in Syria?

The Obama administration seems set to attack the Syrian regime with approximately two day's worth of air and cruise missile strikes in response to the regime's use of chemical weapons against the Syrian rebels. In the immortal words of Demi Moore, "I strenuously object!"1 Here's why:

  • We have no strategic interest whatsoever in entering as military actors in the midst of the Syrian civil war, lest we want to prolong the conflict in order to bleed Iran (a Syrian ally) dry. (And yes, there are some very real moral qualms associated with such a move.) Two day's worth of air and cruise missile strikes will not achieve that goal.
  • We don't seem to have any idea of what goal we wish to achieve, other than wanting to lash out at the Syrian regime for an admittedly appalling act. Speaking of which . . .
  • Appalling acts go on all over the world. That doesn't downplay or diminish the outrage that should greet such acts but are we going to respond to all of them with military force? What is special about the Syrian case?
  • As I have written before, the Syrian opposition may not exactly be our best friends.

It is not hard to be angered by the Syrian regime's use of chemical weapons. And I have no problem with an effort to organize some kind of international response designed to punish the regime for its barbarism. But the administration's seeming willingness to employ military force appears to rely an awful lot on the use of the politician's syllogism. And I won't be caught dead backing that kind of argument.

1. A Few Good Men.

The National Security State Run Amok

After reading this, do you feel safer or more secure? Do you think that American national security interests are served when the besotted use the awesome power of the state to spy on those with whom they are in love?

National Security Agency officers on several occasions have channeled their agency’s enormous eavesdropping power to spy on love interests, U.S. officials said.

The practice isn’t frequent — one official estimated a handful of cases in the last decade — but it’s common enough to garner its own spycraft label: LOVEINT.

Spy agencies often refer to their various types of intelligence collection with the suffix of “INT,” such as “SIGINT” for collecting signals intelligence, or communications; and “HUMINT” for human intelligence, or spying.

The “LOVEINT” examples constitute most episodes of willful misconduct by NSA employees, officials said.

In the wake of revelations last week that NSA had violated privacy rules on nearly 3,000 occasions in a one-year period, NSA Chief Compliance Officer John DeLong emphasized in a conference call with reporters last week that those errors were unintentional. He did say that there have been “a couple” of willful violations in the past decade. He said he didn’t have the exact figures at the moment.

NSA said in a statement Friday that there have been “very rare” instances of willful violations of any kind in the past decade, and none have violated key surveillance laws. “NSA has zero tolerance for willful violations of the agency’s authorities” and responds “as appropriate.”

After you have picked your jaw up from off the floor, read this as well. I don't know which part of the story is worse; the fact that a Hindu traveler was mistaken for a Muslim? The fact that a TSA officer demonstrated that he knows nothing whatsoever about Hinduism and that what he thinks he knows is laughably wrong? The fact that no traveler--Hindu, Muslim, Jew, Christian--ought to be subjected to such a mix of both insulting behavior and inept security procedures? The examples of petty tyranny that make up so much of the piece? The craven actions of JetBlue? The fact that in all of its years of existence, the TSA appears to have learned precisely nothing from past mistakes?

Oh, and while we are on the subject, this Venn diagram still is accurate:

Venn Diagram
I swear, some politician could strike electoral gold if s/he ran a campaign made up in large part of efforts to making the TSA go the way of the dodo bird.

Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden Are Not Heroes

Mark Bowden explains why:

As an old reporter who has from time to time outed classified information, I have watched the cases of Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden with professional interest.

What troubles me about them is not that they broke the oaths they swore when they took their classified government jobs, the thing that makes them liable to prosecution. Government finds all kinds of dubious reasons to keep secrets, sometimes nefarious reasons, and conscience can force one to break a promise. My problem is with the indiscriminate nature of their leaks.

These are young people at war with the concept of secrecy itself, which is just foolish. There are many legitimate reasons for governments to keep secrets, among them the need to preserve the element of surprise in military operations or criminal investigations, to permit leaders and diplomats to bargain candidly, and to protect the identities of those we ask to perform dangerous and difficult missions.

The most famous leakers in American history were motivated not by a general opposition to secrecy but by a desire to expose specific wrongdoing. Mark Felt, the “Deep Throat” who helped steer Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s Watergate reporting, understood that the Nixon Administration was energetically abusing the powers of the presidency. Daniel Ellsberg copied and leaked the Pentagon Papers because they showed that the White House and Pentagon had never really believed the lies they were telling about the Vietnam War.

In other words, they had good reasons. The reporters and editors who published their leaks weighed taking that step seriously, ultimately deciding that the public’s need to know trumped the principle of secrecy. They concluded that the government in these instances was abusing its power.

Manning and Snowden are wholesale leakers. I can’t know this for a fact, but I suspect they were not completely aware of all they carried off. It isn’t just that they didn’t completely understand what they were leaking; they literally did not know what all of it was. Computers enable individual operators to open floodgates. Out spills everything, the legitimate along with the illegitimate. It’s easy, and it’s irresponsible. It proceeds from a Julian Assange-influenced, comic-book vision  of the world where all governments are a part of an evil plot against humanity.

Well put. And of course, this means that the people who support Manning and Snowden are also "at war with the concept of secrecy itself," not to mention being  at war with the fact that the United States and other countries have every right to preserve and advance their national security interests--sometimes through the use of secrecy. As Bowden indicates, not everything that is secret is bad. Too bad that Manning, Snowden and their allies either don't understand that fact, or pretend not to understand it.

So, the NSA Broke the Law

A lot. Let us count the violations:

The documents, provided earlier this summer to The Washington Post by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, include a level of detail and analysis that is not routinely shared with Congress or the special court that oversees surveillance. In one of the documents, agency personnel are instructed to remove details and substitute more generic language in reports to the Justice Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

In one instance, the NSA decided that it need not report the unintended surveillance of Americans. A notable example in 2008 was the interception of a “large number” of calls placed from Washington when a programming error confused the U.S. area code 202 for 20, the international dialing code for Egypt, according to a “quality assurance” review that was not distributed to the NSA’s oversight staff.

In another case, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which has authority over some NSA operations, did not learn about a new collection method until it had been in operation for many months. The court ruled it unconstitutional.

The Obama administration has provided almost no public information about the NSA’s compliance record. In June, after promising to explain the NSA’s record in “as transparent a way as we possibly can,” Deputy Attorney General James Cole described extensive safeguards and oversight that keep the agency in check. “Every now and then, there may be a mistake,” Cole said in congressional testimony.

To be sure, as the Post report points out, most of the violations were unintended, and the percentage of violations was quite small, given the vast amount of activity that the NSA engages in. But that hardly obviates one's concerns. And some of the violations are quite serious, consisting, as they do, of "unauthorized access to intercepted communications, the distribution of protected content and the use of automated systems without built-in safeguards to prevent unlawful surveillance." Additionally,

[i]n what appears to be one of the most serious violations, the NSA diverted large volumes of international data passing through fiber-optic cables in the United States into a repository where the material could be stored temporarily for processing and selection.

The operation to obtain what the agency called “multiple communications transactions” collected and commingled U.S. and foreign e-mails, according to an article in SSO News, a top-secret internal newsletter of the NSA’s Special Source Operations unit. NSA lawyers told the court that the agency could not practicably filter out the communications of Americans.

In October 2011, months after the program got underway, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court ruled that the collection effort was unconstitutional. The court said that the methods used were “deficient on statutory and constitutional grounds,” according to a top-secret summary of the opinion, and it ordered the NSA to comply with standard privacy protections or stop the program.

James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, has acknowledged that the court found the NSA in breach of the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures, but the Obama administration has fought a Freedom of Information lawsuit that seeks the opinion.

The mind reels. How any of this activity helps protect the country and makes Americans feel safer and more secure is left almost entirely to the imagination, especially given the NSA's efforts to circumvent FISA Amendment Act audits that are designed to keep the program honest.

Of course, you should read the whole report. But doing so may depress you tremendously. You have been warned.

Hypocrisy Watch (Complaining about Espionage Edition)

Following up on this post, it is worth noting this story:

If you buy the latest reporting out of Europe, France is outraged, simply outraged, at news that the National Security Agency has been eavesdropping on the European Union through its mission in New York and embassy in Washington. French political parties are now rumbling about offering asylum to Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor at the center of the leaks. The French government is demanding answers from the United States about its snooping. Monsieur Le Président himself, François Hollande, is calling for an end to the spying.

All of which is pretty hilarious, given France's penchant for stealing American defense technology, bugging American business executives and generally annoying U.S. counterintelligence officials. If you've been paying attention, you know that France is a proficient, notorious and unrepentant economic spy. "In economics, we are competitors, not allies," Pierre Marion, the former director of France's equivalent of the CIA, once said. "America has the most technical information of relevance. It is easily accessible. So naturally your country will receive the most attention from the intelligence services."

Anyone want to bet that France isn't alone among EU members in conducting espionage activities against a country it calls an ally?

UPDATE: The Germans and British spy on allies too. Who woulda thunk it?