On Sept. 9, Secretary of State John Kerry announced a new agreement with Russia that would manage the air war in Syria. The hope is that the United States and Russia would coordinate targeting against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), and that Russia would restrain Syrian President Bashar Assad from the barrel bombing of enemies of his regime that is killing civilians and driving the flow of refugees from his country. In addition, the United States would try to get Syrian moderates opposed to Assad to separate from Islamists also working against the Syrian president.
{mosads}Why are we undertaking a deal with an untrustworthy regime with interests totally at cross-purposes to our own? What would happen if we simply left? After all, why is this our problem? We didn’t help in Sudan or Ethiopia. We ran away from Somalia. Where is the United Nations Security Council? We could certainly contribute to an international effort, but haven’t we amply demonstrated our utter incompetence in managing regime change and nation-building?
Locally, in its Middle Eastern enclave, ISIS is really small potatoes. It has limited artillery, no air support and questionable logistics. Any of the top 10 armies in the world could beat it singlehanded. Even the Iraqi army could have done it with a little U.S. help, had it been trained to the degree U.S. generals repeatedly claimed in Senate subcommittees. ISIS’s nature, despite the beheading videos, is unremarkable, and no different from predecessors who blew up mosques and perforated skulls in Iraq with power drills.
Sure, ISIS has shown a flair for recruiting on the internet, but anyone with knowledge of counterterrorism knows that European fighters have been streaming to Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Middle East as long as there have been problems. What ISIS is today, al Qaeda was yesterday, and Black September before that. If we’re concerned with protecting the United States from these miscreants, let’s do it at home, where the many billions of dollars are more likely to supply the intelligence and other resources that would have the desired effect. That’s got to be better than having billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of small arms disappear into the Middle East sinkhole.
The Middle East is a vast demolition derby that has no interest in some outsider playing traffic cop, especially one who doesn’t really understand the rules of the sport. We aren’t the first to apply for the job. Pundits blame the United States for unleashing the current array of demons. In truth, one must go back to the Sunni-Shiite split 1,400 years ago. The inability to appreciate its implications was clearly demonstrated after World War I, when the British and French created phony countries like Iraq and Syria, just like some in Europe. Ironically, the West stayed silent while Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia went away, but furiously try to maintain the national fictions of the Middle East, where the desire to split into tribal and religious enclaves is so much more furiously pursued. Oil will make people and nations do desperate things.
What will happen if the plan succeeds and both the ISIS and Nusra Front Islamists collapse? Moderates opposing Assad have appeared ineffective. They are certainly unlikely to overthrow Assad on their own. Russia is tied to Assad, and is likely to prop up his regime, just as Russia has helped Iran in numerous ways, including the provision of nuclear reactors and ultra-sophisticated air defense systems. Potentially more complicated is the trilateral relationship involving the United States, Russia and Turkey, which is starting to resemble a game of musical chairs, with the loser forfeiting influence in the region.
The odds are not in our favor. With a presidential election looming, and a government that tends to exhibit lengthy fits of paralysis in the best of circumstances, it is becoming easier for locals to trust Russia to follow through on promises.
The Middle East chapter of American history deserves to be closed. The world is riven by chaos, and the day of the West having the ability to guide events in troubled regions is long past. The renowned strategist and historian Edward Luttwak wrote an article in Foreign Affairs magazine 15 years ago that advocated that such problems never went away unless locals were allowed to work them out alone through victory or mutual exhaustion. As an example, the apparently intractable tragedy in Northern Ireland ended just so, with the help of mediators solicited from the United States. There are activists that think that this deal with Russia is just what we need. What we need is a break.
Blady, M.D., is a former program officer for the undersecretary of Defense for policy and senior analyst for the undersecretary of Defense for intelligence.
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