Sirija

[Prospero]

Moze biti da su prosto zalutali...

 

https://twitter.com/CrispinBurke/status/669300173718204416

 

TT via LG G3

[mackenzie]

"Sivi vuk", fwiw:

 

#

[ManicMiner]

Postoji i mogucnost da je bilo unapred doneto naredjenje da ih gadjaju kada sledeci put ulete tako da danas nije bilo nikakve komunikacije sa vrhom. Uopste nemam utisak da se Turci peru od ovoga.

 

Ja se zaista ne secam da se bilo ko&bilo kada prao kada njegovi narajcani Ajsmeni i Maverici obore ne borbeni, nego cak i putnicki avion.

 

edit: osim ako se pod 'pranjem' ne podrazumeva i - nisu odgovorili, ispalili smo hice upozorenja ali nista, gledali smo u radar i mislili da cemo biti napadnuti i sl. Upravo kao sto to rade Turci.

 

Uostalom evo i primera - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655 . 

Edited November 25, 2015 by ManicMiner

[apostata]

[apostata]

Saopštenje ruskog generalštaba u vezi obaranja Су-24М.

 

 

 

Сегодня в 10.24 мск при выполнении боевого вылета над территорией Сирийской Арабской Республики истребителем турецких ВВС F-16 был сбит фронтовой бомбардировщик Су-24М российских ВКС. Предположительно, поражение было нанесено ракетой ближнего радиуса действия с тепловой головкой самонаведения.

 

Никаких попыток со стороны турецкого самолета связаться или установить визуальный контакт с нашим экипажем средствами объективного контроля не зафиксировано.

 

Попадание ракеты в самолет Су-24М произошло над территорией Сирии. Место падения самолета находится на сирийской территории в четырех километрах от границы. Экипаж самолета катапультировался. По предварительным данным, один пилот погиб в воздухе от огня с земли.

 

По точным данным объективного контроля, наш самолет границу с Турцией не пересекал.

Это же подтверждается данными сирийской ПВО.

Более того, по данным радиолокационной разведки аэродрома "Хмеймим", отмечен факт нарушения воздушного пространства Сирии атакующим самолетом ВВС Турции.

 

Этот факт расценивается как грубейшее нарушение норм международного права с самыми тяжелыми последствиями и прямое нарушение Меморандума о предотвращении инцидентов и обеспечения безопасности полетов в Сирийской Арабской Республике, заключенного с США и распространяющегося на все страны коалиции, включая Турцию.

 

Видимо, поэтому Турция начала экстренные консультации с НАТО вместо того, чтобы вступить в срочном порядке в контакт с Министерством обороны Российской Федерации.

Турецкому военному атташе в Российской Федерации заявлен решительный протест действиям ВВС Турции, приведшим к потере нашего самолета.

 

Следует отметить, что мы с самого начала проведения операции установили прямую телефонную линию между Национальным центром управления обороной РФ и Минобороны Турции, но практической пользы по вине турецкой стороны она не принесла.

 

В целях эвакуации российских летчиков с места приземления была проведена поисково-спасательная операция с привлечением двух вертолетов Ми-8. В ходе операции один из вертолетов в результате огня из стрелкового оружия получил повреждения и совершил вынужденную посадку на нейтральной территории. Один морской пехотинец-контрактник погиб.

 

Проведенными действиями личный состав поисково-спасательной группы и экипаж вертолета были эвакуированы и в настоящее время находятся на авиационной базе "Хмеймим". С территории, подконтрольной бандформированиям, минометным огнем вертолет был уничтожен.

 

Операция по поиску и спасанию экипажа подбитого российского бомбардировщика продолжается.

Хочу подчеркнуть, что в районе действий российской авиации проводится операция сирийских правительственных войск по уничтожению бандформирований, в которых, по нашим данным, сосредоточено более 1000 боевиков — выходцев с Северного Кавказа.

 

Обращаю внимание, что никто из наших партнеров и стран, ведущих боевые действия против ИГИЛ, никогда не говорили о том, что в этом районе находятся подразделения так называемой умеренной оппозиции и что они не рекомендуют наносить удары по этому району. Напротив, эти районы известны как территории, контролируемые наиболее радикальными бандформированиями.

 

Генеральным штабом в настоящее время прорабатываются дополнительные меры по обеспечению безопасности российской авиационной базы.

 

Первое: все действия ударной авиации будут осуществляться только под прикрытием самолетов-истребителей.

 

Второе: будут приняты меры по усилению противовоздушной обороны. С этой целью крейсер "Москва", оснащенный системой ПВО "Форт", аналогичной С-300, займет район в прибрежной части Латакии. Предупреждаем, что все цели, представляющие для нас потенциальную опасность, будут уничтожаться.

 

Третье: контакты с Турцией по военной линии будут прекращены.

 

http://ria.ru/syria_mission/20151124/1327765206.html

 

 

[ManicMiner]

Lovacka pratnja, S-300, pucanje na svaki sumnjivi cilj, prekid svakog vojnog kontakta sa Turskom.... divno.

[apostata]

I ovo je interesantno .., naravno ako je tačno.

 

Источник: Турция приостановила провокации на границе с Грецией

 

Ежедневно Турция совершает десятки нарушений воздушного пространства Греции. Ни одного нарушения не зафиксировано после инцидента с крушением российского Су-24 на турецко-сирийской границе.

 

АФИНЫ, 24 ноя — РИА Новости, Геннадий Мельник. Турецкие ВВС во вторник не совершили ни одного нарушения воздушного пространства Греции после ЧП с российским истребителем, сообщил РИА Новости дипломатический источник в Афинах.

 

"Сегодня не было ни одного инцидента в греческом воздушном пространстве. Сегодня была нулевая деятельность турецкой авиации в греческом FIR в Эгейском море. Понятно, почему", — сказал собеседник агентства.

 

Турция ежедневно совершает десятки нарушений воздушного пространства Греции. С начала ноября было более 50 нарушений.

 

Во вторник российский самолет Су-24 потерпел крушение в Сирии. Президент России Владимир Путин сообщил, что самолет был сбит ракетой типа "воздух-воздух" с турецкого F-16 над сирийской территорией, и упал в Сирии в четырех километрах от границы с Турцией. Российский президент назвал это "ударом в спину" со стороны пособников террористов.

 

РИА Новости http://ria.ru/world/20151124/1327718689.html#ixzz3sSeiI15x

[Skyhighatrist]

Saopštenje ruskog generalštaba u vezi obaranja Су-24М.

 

 

http://ria.ru/syria_mission/20151124/1327765206.html

 

 

 

 

w. English subtitles

Edited November 25, 2015 by Skyhighatrist

[Eraserhead]

Ja se zaista ne secam da se bilo ko&bilo kada prao kada njegovi narajcani Ajsmeni i Maverici obore ne borbeni, nego cak i putnicki avion.

 

edit: osim ako se pod 'pranjem' ne podrazumeva i - nisu odgovorili, ispalili smo hice upozorenja ali nista, gledali smo u radar i mislili da cemo biti napadnuti i sl. Upravo kao sto to rade Turci.

 

Uostalom evo i primera - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655 . 

 

Radi se o tome da uopste ne sticem utisak da su Turci u fazonu "U zajebali smo se" nego su vise u fazonu "U pravu smo i opet cemo".

[Muwan]

malo verovatno da su znali. ruski avioni su bili blizu ili su se kretali ka Turskoj. upozorenje sluzi da se predupredi ulazak u vazdusni prostor.

 

kao sto napisah, ostaje da se vidi sta su Turci radili tih 5-6 (ili koliko vec) minuta. da li je uopste postojala komunikacija sa politickim vrhom. ako jeste, kakva.

Možemo mi da se pravimo blesavi do sudnjeg dana ali ruski avion se ne obara u naletu panike i nedostatku komunikacije, niti usled strogih RoE. U postavci kao što je ova sirijska ti tačno znaš ko ti leti tu okolo, tačnije znaš da je Rus u pitanju, i ako pucaš znaš odlično u koga pucaš pa makar se 30 puta pre toga konsultovao sa svim najmudrijim glavama iz Bratstva. Svi koji su sa turske strane učestvovali u ovome su odlično znali šta obaraju, isto kao što su znali da meta nije nikakva pretnja Turskoj već turskim interesima u Siriji (koji su definisani tako da makar ruski interesi ne ispadnu ubedljivo najgluplji u društvu). Čitava stvar je suva politika tj. igranje iste od strane arhiimbecila koji nisu sposobni da sastave mesec dana bez da naprave nešto loše po čitav svet.

[wall]

Ama ljudi™ tuđe letelice se ne obaraju ni kada povrede vazdušni prostor, obaraju se kada postanu direktna i nedvosmislena pretnja. Svakako ne za borak u par desetina sekundi i sigurno ne bez prethodne identifikacije.

E sada tuđa<>neprijateljska.

[James Marshall]

Taj isti Asad je do početka rata bio najradije vidjen gost u Ankari a hanuma mu nije izbivala iz Istanbula. Radi se o tome da su dileje iz MB potpuno izgubile kompas i koliko god ih Gandalf pravno zastupao pro bono, mahao novim RoE i branio sveto pravo Turske da puca na svakog ko samo zakorači u njen sveti vazdušni prostor (dočim dole na zemlji našu svetu granicu ne prelazi samo onaj ko neće), ovo što su danas uradili ne može da se nazove drugačije osim samovoljnim skokom u bunar dubok 30 metara. Ja i dalje pokušavam da pronadjem trag bilo kakve logične računice i jednostavno mi ne ide. Taman se unutrašnja kriza smirila, narod im dao full mandat da smire stvari i stabilizuju zemlju, i oni bukvalno u prvom satu nove vlade krenu u vojnu konfrontaciju sa Rusijom. Prsli su bre potpuno, tu ne vredi više tražiti bilo kakva objašnjenja.

 

Meni btw ovo večeras deluje kao ozbiljna eskalacija. Rusi kažu da će "Moskva" pucati na sve što bude predstavljalo pretnju što ja tumačim kao da uopšte neće čekati da neki turski F-16 zaluta u Siriju. Poslali su i dve dodatne eskadrile Su-27 i Su-34. Oni sigurno neće pretiti praznom puškom jer je poslednje što žele da njihovi piloti (javnost da ne pominjem) pomisle da su neka potrošna roba na kojoj će tursko RV vežbati svoje superstroge RoE a njihova komanda nemoćno posmatrati. Meni deluje da su oni večeras Turskoj uveli zonu zabranjenog leta u nekom pojasu duž sirijske granice, tim pre što NATO insistira da ovo nije izmedju njih i Rusije nego izmedju Turske i Rusije - što mi takodje deluje kao presedan. Ovo blamiranje sa tvrdnjama da su piloti živi takodje ukazuje na to da makar neki savetnik u Ankari možda ima ideju kakvu svinjariju su napravili sa svojim RoE i da se valja hitno izvlačiti. Samo što je sad malkice prekasno.

 

Hvala na odgovoru, živ bio trista godina  :)

[zmanic]

Seća li se neko ruskih "špijunskih" brodova koji nikako da prođu Bosfor te davne, a ne tako daleke 1999. godine i doplove u Jadran?

Sada su se snage nekako promenile. Nekeko mi se čini da neće ni ovo proći bez naših tupana. Sreća pa je vrhovni malo dalje od kuće pa će se kasniti sa reagovanjima i strateškim idejama, ber neki dan.

[Anduril]

^^ Pa nema dobre taktike ako je strategija loša, tj i taktika je nužno gubitnička (pričam načelno).

...

 

Erdogan uzeo izbore i pored unutrasnjih eskalacija a Putin je i dalje na 80% popularnosti iako su mu ekonomija i istocna Evropa izgubljeni na duzi rok. u oba slucaja - short-term gain for a long-term loss a glavna motivacija je uglavnom unutrasnja (odrzanje vlasti) a ne spoljna.

 

Btw. ovde imamo malo detaljniji pregled trenutne americke of shore balancing strategija gde postaje jasno zasto pustaju sve ove lokalne igrace da se sve dublje zavlace u zivo blato:

 

 

The End of Pax Americana Why Washington’s Middle East Pullback Makes Sense

By Steven Simon and Jonathan Stevenson

The Obama administration has clearly pulled back from the United States’ recent interventionism in the Middle East, notwithstanding the rise of the Islamic State (also known as ISIS) and the U.S.-led air war against it. Critics pin the change on the administration’s aversion to U.S. activism in the region, its unwillingness to engage in major combat operations, or President Barack Obama’s alleged ideological preference for diminished global engagement. But the reality is that Washington’s post-9/11 interventions in the region—especially the one in Iraq—were anomalous and shaped false perceptions of a “new normal” of American intervention, both at home and in the region. The administration’s unwillingness to use ground forces in Iraq or Syria constitutes not so much a withdrawal as a correction—an attempt to restore the stability that had endured for several decades thanks to American restraint, not American aggressiveness.

It’s possible to argue that pulling back is less a choice than a necessity. Some realist observers claim that in a time of economic uncertainty and cuts to the U.S. military budget, an expansive U.S. policy in the region has simply become too costly. According to that view, the United States, like the United Kingdom before it, is the victim of its own “imperial overstretch.” Others argue that U.S. policy initiatives, especially the recent negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program, have distanced Washington from its traditional Middle Eastern allies; in other words, the United States isn’t pulling back so much as pushing away.

The long period of American primacy in the Middle East is ending.

In actuality, however, the main driver of the U.S. pullback is not what’s happening in Washington but what’s happening in the region. Political and economic developments in the Middle East have reduced the opportunities for effective American intervention to a vanishing point, and policymakers in Washington have been recognizing that and acting accordingly. Given this, the moderate U.S. pullback should be not reversed but rather continued, at least in the absence of a significant threat to core U.S. interests.

BACK TO NORMAL

Between World War II and the 9/11 attacks, the United States was the quin­tessential status quo power in the Middle East, undertaking military intervention in the region only in exceptional circumstances. Direct U.S. military involvement was nonexistent, minimal, or indirect in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, the 1956 Suez crisis, the Six-Day War in 1967, the Yom Kippur War in 1973, and the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s. The 1982–84 U.S. peacekeeping mission in Lebanon was a notorious failure and gave rise to the “overwhelming force” doctrine, which precluded subsequent U.S. interventions until Saddam Hussein’s extraordinarily reckless invasion of Kuwait forced Washington’s hand in 1990.

Washington didn’t need a forward-leaning policy because U.S. interests largely coincided with those of its strategic allies and partners in the region and could be served through economic and diplomatic relations combined with a modest military presence. The United States and the Gulf Arab states shared a paramount need to maintain stable oil supplies and prices and, more broadly, political stability. Since the Iranian Revolution in 1979, the United States, Israel, and the Gulf Arab states have had the mutual objective of containing Iran. Beginning with the Camp David accords in 1978, American, Egyptian, and Israeli interests converged, and their trilateral relationship was reinforced by substantial U.S. aid to Egypt and Israel alike. And even after 9/11, the United States, Israel, and the Gulf Arab states had shared priorities in their fights against terrorism.

 

U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter arrives at King Abdulaziz International Airport in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, July 2015.

Over the past decade, however, several factors largely unrelated to Washington’s own policy agenda have weakened the bases for these alliances and partnerships. First, the advent of hydraulic fracturing has dramatically reduced direct U.S. dependence on Gulf oil and diminished the strategic value and priority of the U.S. relationship with Saudi Arabia and the smaller Gulf Arab states: indeed, the United States will soon overtake Saudi Arabia as the world’s largest producer of crude oil and will need to import less fossil fuel. Although Gulf producers will keep determining the world price of oil and U.S. companies will continue to have a stake in the Gulf’s wells, the United States will enjoy greater policy discretion and flexibility.

The spread and intensification of jihadism have also weakened the strategic links between the United States and its regional partners. A decade ago, a combination of American pressure and the shock of large-scale al Qaeda attacks inside Saudi Arabia convinced the Saudis and their neighbors to clamp down on jihadist activities within their own borders. Yet today, the Gulf Arab states have subordinated the suppression of jihadism to the goal of overthrowing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and hobbling his patrons in Iran. They are doing this by backing Sunni extremist rebels in Syria despite Washington’s exhortations to stop and Saudi Arabia’s own desire to avoid a post-Assad Syria ruled by radicals. The United States’ regional partners see themselves as less and less answerable to Washington, and Washington feels less obligated to protect the interests of those partners, which seem increasingly parochial and remote from American interests and values. In addition, widespread Islamic radicalization has driven the emergence of a genuine pan-Islamic identity that complicates Western involvement in the Middle East. Consider, for example, the unwillingness of many moderate Sunni Syrian opponents of Assad to accept European or U.S. help, which they believe will disqualify them in the eyes of Islamists.

Meanwhile, from the United States’ standpoint, the Middle East has become a highly dubious place to invest owing to systemic political and economic dysfunction. The region features little water, sparse agriculture, and a massive oversupply of labor. Of the Middle Eastern countries that still function, most run large fiscal and external deficits, maintain huge and inefficient civil service payrolls, and heavily subsidize fuel and other necessities for their populations; lower oil revenues will probably limit the Gulf states’ ability to finance those creaky mechanisms. Active conflicts in many Middle Eastern states have displaced large proportions of their populations and deprived their young people of educational opportunities and hope for the future. These conditions have produced either abject despair or, what is more ominous, political and religious radicalization. The effort to remake the Middle East as an incubator of liberal democracy that would pacify young Muslims failed even when the United States had plenty of cash to throw at the project and more reasons for optimism about its prospects, in the years immediately following the 9/11 attacks.

The potential for American military power to effect major change in the region is diminishing.

Finally, groups within Middle Eastern societies that were once reliable bastions of pro-Western sentiment—such as national militaries, oil-industry elites, and secular technocrats—have generally seen their influence wane. And in instances where traditional pro-Western elements have retained power, their interests and policies now increasingly diverge from American ones. The Egyptian military, for example, served for decades as a pillar of the U.S.-Egyptian relationship. Thanks to the coup it launched in 2013 that placed the former army general Abdel Fattah el-​Sisi at the top of a new authoritarian regime, the military now exerts more control than ever in Egypt. But this hardly augurs well for Washington: if past is prologue, the military’s brutal suppression of the Muslim Brotherhood will almost certainly lead to an increase in jihadist violence and thus expose the United States to the very blowback that its assistance to Egypt is intended to prevent. Hopes in the 1950s and 1960s for the ascendance of a secular, technocratic, Western-oriented Arab elite that would bring their societies with them have long since faded.

POWERFUL BUT POWERLESS

At the same time that the salience of the Middle East to U.S. policy is waning and the interests of the United States and its traditional partners in the Middle East are diverging, the potential for American military power to effect major change in the region is also diminishing. The decentralization of al Qaeda and the emergence of ISIS, a jihadist expeditionary force and quasi state, have increased the asymmetries between U.S. military capabilities and the most urgent threats facing the region. As U.S.-occupied Iraq slid toward civil war in 2006, the Pentagon moved toward improving U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine and practice, revamping the military’s structure to emphasize irregular warfare and special operations. But liberal and accountable democratic governments find it difficult to marshal either the staying power or the savagery that is usually required to suppress an unruly and committed indigenous group—especially a regionwide social movement such as ISIS, which does not recognize physical or political boundaries. This is particularly true when outside powers have no local partners with substantial bureaucratic cohesion or popular legitimacy. The United States still has the resources and resilience to sustain wars against modern nationalist states that would end with clear victors and enforceable outcomes. But Americans have learned the hard way that a transnational clash of ethnicities turbocharged by religious narratives is vastly harder to navigate, let alone manipulate.

A U.S.-led military operation against ISIS, for instance, would no doubt produce impressive and gratifying battlefield victories. But the aftermath of the conflict would drive home the ultimate futility of the project. Solidifying any tactical gains would require political will backed by the support of the American public; a large cadre of deployable civilian experts in reconstruction and stabilization; deep knowledge of the society for whose fate a victorious United States would take responsibility; and, most problematic, a sustained military force to provide security for populations and infrastructure. Even if all those conditions were present, Washington would struggle to find dependable and dedicated local constituents or clients, or indeed allies, to assist. If this sounds familiar, it is because it is the same list of things that Washington wasn’t able to put together the last two times it launched major military interventions in the Middle East, with the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the NATO air campaign against Libya in 2011. Put simply, the United States would likely lose another war in the Middle East for all the same reasons it lost the last two.

Staff Sgt. Kevin Moses Sr / U.S. Army / Handout / Reuters U.S. soldiers on patrol in Shakaria, Iraq, January 2006.

Even a less intensive, counterterrorism-based approach to ISIS, which would involve steady drone strikes and periodic commando operations, would carry grave risks. Collateral damage from U.S. drone attacks, for example, has made it harder for the Pakistani government to extend deeper cooperation to the United States. Five years ago, U.S. military officials took great pride in special operations raids in Afghanistan that resulted in the death or capture of high-value Taliban operatives. But the civilian casualties the raids produced undermined strategic goals by enraging locals and driving them back into the Taliban’s orbit.

For these reasons, U.S. policymakers should entertain serious doubts about taking ownership of any of the Middle East’s ongoing conflicts. Precisely those kinds of doubts explain and justify the Obama administration’s unwillingness to intervene more forcefully in Syria. For a period in 2012 and early 2013, the administration considered a full range of options for Syria, including U.S.- ­­enforced no-fly and buffer zones, regime change by force (facilitated by far more substantial American and allied military assistance to anti-Assad rebels), and limited retaliatory air strikes against the regime in response to its use of chemical weapons. But the growing involvement of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah in defending Assad would have meant an unabashed U.S. proxy war with Iran that could have escalated and spilled over into the rest of region. That would have made it impossible to carry on fruitful talks with Tehran about curtailing its nuclear program and would have forced the United States to surpass Iran’s high levels of commitment and investment in the conflict. In addition, a U.S.-led intervention would have enjoyed very little international backing: China and Russia would have vetoed any UN resolution authorizing it, just as they had vetoed far less muscular resolutions, and the Arab League and NATO would not have endorsed it. And major Western military action would likely have intensified the spread of jihadism in Syria, as it had elsewhere.

KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON

The United States’ primary interest in the Middle East is regional stability. For now at least, constraints on U.S. power and the complex, interdependent nature of U.S. interests in the region—as well as the likelihood of sustained U.S.-Chinese rivalry that will inevitably divert U.S. strategic attention to the Asia-Pacific region—suggest that the best Middle East policy for Washington would be something closer to what international relations theorists call “offshore balancing”: refraining from engagement in overseas military operations and forgoing quasi-imperial nation building to focus instead on selectively using its considerable leverage to exert influence and protect U.S. interests. Washington needs to husband U.S. power in the Middle East, unless a genuine existential threat to its regional allies arises, which is unlikely. This course will require Washington to avoid any further projection of U.S. military power in the region—for example, a large-scale deployment of combat ground troops to fight ISIS.

Critics of U.S. restraint argue that in the absence of strongly asserted U.S. power, Iran or other U.S. nemeses will be emboldened—that restraint will lead to war. But U.S. adversaries will likely judge Washington’s resolve on the basis of conditions as they appear in the moment those adversaries are seriously considering aggressive actions, irrespective of conditions that existed years or months before. As long as the limits of U.S. restraint are clearly enunciated and Washington makes plain that its alliance with Israel remains undiminished, Iran will be loath to confront Israel or act much more aggressively in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, or elsewhere in the region for fear of triggering a decisive American response that could scupper the nuclear deal and revive the painful sanctions that drove Tehran to the bargaining table in the first place. In any case, the question of whether saber rattling will provoke or deter a potential adversary can never be answered with complete confidence, since decision-makers often misjudge the perceptions and temperament of their rivals.

U.S. policymakers should entertain serious doubts about taking ownership of any of the Middle East’s ongoing conflicts.

Whether rapprochement is a promising paradigm for U.S.-Iranian relations remains to be seen. Iran clearly seeks to exert its influence wherever it can, but it’s far from clear that it can dominate the region. Iranian influence in Iraq was aided by the vacuum created by the U.S. invasion but stems more broadly from the demographic and political primacy of Iraq’s Shiites and is thus unavoidable. As long as Baghdad remains dependent on the United States for countering ISIS, Washington should retain sufficient leverage to moderate Iraqi politics and limit Iran’s sway. Iranian support for the Houthi rebels in Yemen and for dissident Shiites in Bahrain is more opportunistic than strategic and therefore unlikely to permanently shift the balance of power in either place. Tehran’s meddling in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict doesn’t rise to the level of a strategic challenge: the Palestinian militant group Hamas has not been able to translate Iranian largess into a serious advantage over Israel, let alone Egypt and the Palestinian Authority, all of which oppose Hamas. Iran’s footholds in Lebanon and Syria go back decades, but even though its proxies in both places have steadily increased their commitment to defend the Assad regime, they have been unable to avert Syria’s de facto partition. Even if Iran chooses to make Syria its Vietnam, the best it could probably manage against an externally supported anti-Assad opposition would be to consolidate the status quo while sharing the meager rewards with Moscow. Syria, then, would be a springboard for Iranian mischief but hardly a platform for controlling the region. In short, even with the nuclear deal in place, Iran won’t be able to do much more now—and possibly even less—than it was able to do in the past.

The nuclear deal has produced a genuine split between the Americans and the Israelis, who believe that the deal’s terms are too lenient and won’t prevent the Iranians from developing a nuclear weapon. But the divide is unlikely to have dire practical consequences. Washington has an obligation to maintain its unique relationship with Israel and has a strategic interest in preserving bilateral links with the Israeli military, which is by far the region’s most powerful fighting force. The nuclear deal with Iran also upset the Gulf Arab states. But Washington’s global economic responsibilities and its substantial counterterrorist interests still require the United States to safeguard its strategic relationship with those countries, particularly Saudi Arabia. And the Gulf Arab states retain a stronger cultural connection with the United States than with any other major power: Gulf elites send their children to American universities as opposed to Chinese, Russian, or European ones.

The Israelis and the Gulf Arabs need not panic: prudence dictates a serviceable regional U.S. military presence to prevent ISIS from expanding further (into Jordan, for example) and to deter Iranian breaches of the nuclear deal and respond to any destabilizing Iranian moves, such as a major ground intervention in Iraq. The American military footprint in the region should not change. At least one U.S. carrier battle group should remain assigned to the Arabian Sea. The structure and personnel strength of U.S. military bases in the Middle East should stay the same. The air campaign against ISIS should continue, and American troops will still need to be deployed occasionally on a selective basis to quell terrorist threats or even respond in a limited way to large-scale atrocities or environmental disasters. But a resolute policy of restraint requires that any major expeditionary military ground intervention on the part of the United States in the Middle East be avoided and that regional partners be encouraged to take on more responsibility for their own security.

AIM LOWER, SCORE HIGHER

In addition to affirming its pullback from the military interventionism of the post-9/11 era, Washington needs to recalibrate its diplomatic priorities. The aftermath of the Arab revolts of 2011—especially those in Egypt, Libya, and Syria—demonstrated that most Middle Eastern societies are not ready to take significant steps toward democracy, and so American attempts to promote further political liberalization in the region should be more subdued. U.S. officials should also recognize that a lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians is highly unlikely to take shape in the medium term. The United States’ dogged determination to accomplish that objective, even in the least propitious circumstances, has created a moral hazard. Successive Israeli governments have been able to thwart Washington’s peacemaking efforts with near impunity, confident that the Americans would continue to try no matter what. In turn, the United States’ inability to facilitate an agreement has contributed to perceptions of Washington as a declining power—even as some U.S. allies in the Gulf see U.S. pressure on Israel as another example of U.S. faithlessness as an ally.

The United States should always support the goals of democratization and Israeli-Palestinian peace. But in the medium term, rather than unrealistically clinging to those aims, Washington should try to capitalize on the Iran nuclear deal to improve relations with Tehran. If the implementation of the deal gets off to a relatively smooth start, Washington should probe Tehran’s flexibility in other areas with an eye to fostering a kind of modus vivendi between the Iranians and the Saudis—something that looks very unlikely now, as it has for years. One way to do so would be to bring Iran and other governments together in an effort to end the Syrian civil war through a political agreement. The emerging recognition among the major players—the United States, Russia, Iran, and the Gulf Arab states—is that, although ISIS’ dream of a border-busting caliphate remains out of the group’s reach, the ongoing conflict in Syria risks dangerously empowering ISIS and accelerating the propagation of its extremist ideology.

Noah Browning / REUTERS Emirati soldiers in a helicopter over Yemen en route to a Saudi-led coalition air base in Saudi Arabia, September 2015.

But each player has also come to realize that its preferred method of solving the Syrian crisis is probably unworkable. For the United States and its Gulf partners, supporting forcible regime change by Syrian rebels who are increasingly infiltrated or co-opted by ISIS appears counterproductive as well as operationally dubious. At the same time, after more than four years of a military stalemate, it is clear that Iran’s ongoing support for Assad and Russia’s recent intensification of its aid to the regime can merely help maintain the status quo but cannot decisively swing conditions in Assad’s favor. Both Tehran and Moscow seem to understand that regardless of their support, Assad’s regime is weaker than ever and it will probably prove impossible to reconstitute a unitary Syria ruled exclusively by the regime. For mainly these reasons, both Iran and Russia have recently shown more interest in exploring a negotiated settlement. Although Russia’s protestations that it is not wedded to Assad are disingenuous, Moscow has supported the UN Security Council’s investigation of the regime’s apparent use of indiscriminate barrel bombs filled with poisonous chlorine gas and has backed the Security Council’s August 2015 statement reinvigorating the quest for a political transition in Syria. Tehran, with Hezbollah’s support, has been pushing a peace plan involving a national unity government and a revised constitution, although one under which Assad or his regime would remain in power at least in the short term.

A realistic mechanism for taking advantage of these tenuously converging interests has not materialized. But the Iran nuclear deal has demonstrated the potential of diplomacy to ameliorate regional crises. In addition to countering the spread of jihadism, a U.S.-brokered agreement to end the Syrian civil war would mitigate and eventually end the world’s most pressing humanitarian crisis and restore much of the American prestige that has waned in the region. Effective and inclusive conflict resolution on Syria would also validate the rapprochement with Iran and might help convince the Israelis of the efficacy of the United States’ new approach.

Washington should leverage the new diplomatic bonds that the nuclear negotiations forged among the major powers—and, in particular, between U.S. and Iranian officials—to reinvigorate multinational talks on Syria’s transition. An initial step might be to reconvene the Geneva II conference, which foundered in February 2014, gathering the original parties and adding Iran to the mix. Russia’s insistence that Assad’s departure cannot be a precondition to political talks should not be a deal breaker and in fact could be an enticement for Iran to participate, which U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry might now be able to facilitate through a direct appeal to Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. The Gulf Arab states’ cautious endorsement of the nuclear agreement and Saudi Arabia’s participation in trilateral talks with the United States and Russia on Syria in early August suggest that the Gulf Arabs are growing more comfortable with diplomacy as a means of easing strategic tensions with Iran. On account of their heightened perception of the ISIS threat, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey might now drop their insistence that Assad depart prior to negotiations.

The best Middle East policy for Washington would be closer to what international relations theorists call “offshore balancing."

The hardest part, of course, will be arriving at plausible transitional arrangements. One possibility would be to create a power-sharing body with executive authority that could marginalize ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syria-based militant group affiliated with al Qaeda, as implicitly contemplated in the August UN Security Council statement. Another would be to partition the country to some degree and establish a confederacy of sorts to replace central rule from Damascus. Tactical cease-fires reached between the regime and moderate opposition forces could serve as the building blocks for those kinds of broader political arrangements and might also allow the parties to focus on fighting the jihadist factions, which represent a common enemy.

MATURE WITHDRAWAL

The long period of American primacy in the Middle East is ending. Although the Iraq war damaged Washington’s credibility and empowered U.S. adversaries, by the time the United States invaded Iraq, the region was already becoming less malleable all on its own. The United States should not and cannot withdraw in a literal sense, but it should continue to pull back, both to service strategic priorities elsewhere and in recognition of its dwindling influence. Neither the United States nor its regional partners want to see Iran with nuclear weapons or substantially increased regional influence. And none of the main players in the region wants to see a quantum leap in the power of ISIS or other Salafi jihadist organizations. But because the United States’ leverage has diminished, it must concentrate on forging regional stability. That would be a wiser approach than pushing for improbable political liberalization and a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as the Obama administration has done, or trying to transform the region through the use of force, a strategy that the Bush administration relied on with woeful results.

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In particular, Washington must acknowledge that reducing its military role will mean that its allies will exercise greater independence in their own military decisions. In turn, U.S. allies need to understand just how much support Washington is willing to provide before they launch risky military adventures, such as Saudi Arabia’s recent strikes against the Houthi rebels in Yemen. Washington and its partners need better bilateral and multilateral communications and planning. Washington will need to be clearer about what might prompt it to intervene militarily and what level of force it would use, and it will need to initiate more detailed joint planning for the full range of its possible responses.

Israel still favors confronting Iran instead of smoothing relations, and Washington will have to strictly police the nuclear deal to convince the Israelis of its effectiveness. But as ISIS has risen, the Gulf Arab states and Turkey have warmed a bit to the United States’ approach to Iran and to Washington’s position that containing the spread of jihadism is now more important than achieving regime change in Syria.

For Washington to successfully commit itself to a constructive pullback from the Middle East, it will need to make its best efforts to avoid directly impeding the priorities of its regional allies and partners—and it should demand that its friends in the region do the same. That will require focused diplomacy supported by clear articulations of Washington’s commitment to its core interests. Washington should stress, in particular, that the Iran nuclear deal will actually ensure, rather than threaten, sustained U.S. diplomatic engagement in the region. Instead of reversing course, Washington needs to embrace the idea of establishing a healthier equilibrium in U.S.–Middle Eastern relations, one that involves a lighter management role for the United States. The military-centric interventionism of the past 14 years was an aberration from a longer history of American restraint; it must not harden into a new long-term norm

[Muwan]

Dobar tekst. Jedino mu fali da primeti da je želja SAD za stabilnošću u regionu u blagoj koliziji sa blanko podrškom koju daju svojim regionalnim saveznicima u sprovodjenju njihovog "sveeeeeeee" plana tj. strategije nultog kompromisa do potpune propasti neprijatelja kao jedinog prihvatljivog ishoda. Tako će dobiti regionalnu stabilnost na sveti nikad. Eto, još taj detalj da iskoriguju i imaće skroz dobru bliskoistočnu agendu.

Edited November 25, 2015 by beowl