Sirija

[Prospero]

Obama’s Disastrous Betrayal of the Syrian Rebels

 

How the White House is handing victory to Bashar al-Assad, Russia, and Iran.

• BY EMILE HOKAYEM

• FEBRUARY 5, 2016

 

 

What a difference a year makes in Syria. And the introduction of massive Russian airpower.

 

Last February, President Bashar al-Assad’s regime and its Shiite auxiliaries mounted a large-scale attempt to encircle Aleppo, the northern city divided between regime and rebels since 2012 and battered by the dictator’s barrel bombs. Islamist and non-Islamist mainstream rebels — to the surprise of those who have derided their performance, let alone their existence — repelled the offensive at the time. What followed was a string of rebel advances across the country, which weakened Assad so much that they triggered Moscow’s direct intervention in September, in concert with an Iranian surge of forces, to secure his survival.

 

Fast-forward a year. After a slow start — and despite wishful Western assessments that Moscow could not sustain a meaningful military effort abroad — the Russian campaign is finally delivering results for the Assad regime. This week, Russian airpower allowed Assad and his allied paramilitary forces to finally cut off the narrow, rebel-held “Azaz corridor” that links the Turkish border to the city of Aleppo. The city’s full encirclement is now a distinct possibility, with regime troops and Shiite fighters moving from the south, the west, and the north. Should the rebel-held parts of the city ultimately fall, it will be a dramatic victory for Assad and the greatest setback to the rebellion since the start of the uprising in 2011.

 

In parallel, Russia has put Syria’s neighbors on notice of the new rules of the game. Jordan was spooked into downgrading its help for the Southern Front, the main non-Islamist alliance in the south of the country, which has so far prevented extremist presence along its border. Turkey’s shooting down of a Russian military aircraft that crossed its airspace in November backfired: Moscow vengefully directed its firepower on Turkey’s rebel friends across Idlib and Aleppo provinces. Moscow also courted Syria’s Kurds, who found a new partner to play off the United States in their complex relations with Washington. And Russia has agreed to a temporary accommodation of Israel’s interests in southern Syria.

 

Inside Syria, and despite the polite wishes of Secretary of State John Kerry, the overwhelming majority of Russian strikes have hit non-Islamic State (IS) fighters. Indeed, Moscow and the Syrian regime are content to see the United States bear the lion’s share of the effort against the jihadi monster in the east, instead concentrating on mowing through the mainstream rebellion in western Syria. Their ultimate objective is to force the world to make an unconscionable choice between Assad and IS.

 

The regime is everywhere on the march. Early on, the rebels mounted a vigorous resistance, but the much-touted increase in anti-tank weaponry could only delay their losses as their weapons storages, command posts and fall-back positions were being pounded. Around Damascus, the unrelenting Russian pounding has bloodied rebel-held neighborhoods; in December, the strikes killed Zahran Alloush, the commander of the main Islamist militia there. In the south, Russia has fully backed the regime’s offensive in the region of Daraa, possibly debilitating the Southern Front. Rebel groups in Hama and Homs provinces have faced a vicious pounding that has largely neutralized them. Further north, a combination of Assad troops, Iranian Shiite militias, and Russian firepower dislodged the powerful Islamist rebel coalition Jaish Al-Fatah from Latakia province.

 

But it is the gains around Aleppo that represent the direst threat to the rebellion. One perverse consequence of cutting the Azaz corridor is that it plays into the hands of the al Qaeda-affiliate Jabhat Al-Nusra, since weapons supplies from Turkey would have to go through Idlib, where the jihadist movement is powerful. Idlib may well become the regime’s next target. The now-plausible rebel collapse in the Aleppo region could also send thousands of fighters dejected by their apparent abandonment into the arms of Nusra or IS.

 

The encirclement of Aleppo would also create a humanitarian disaster of such magnitude that it would eclipse the horrific sieges of Madaya and other stricken regions that have received the world’s (short-lived) attention. Tens of thousands of Aleppo residents are already fleeing toward Kilis, the Turkish town that sits across the border from Azaz. The humanitarian crisis, lest anyone still had any doubt, is a deliberate regime and Russian strategy to clear important areas of problematic residents — while paralyzing rebels, neighboring countries, Western states, and the United Nations.

 

Assad all along pursued a strategy of gradual escalation and desensitization that, sadly, worked well. Syrians already compare the international outcry and response to the IS’ siege of Kobane in 2014 to the world’s indifference to the current tragedy.

 

To complicate the situation even more, the regime’s advances could allow the Kurdish-dominated, American-favored Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to conquer the area currently held by the Free Syrian Army and Islamist militias between the Turkish border and the new regime front line north of the Shiite towns of Nubl and Zahra. This would pit the SDF against IS on two fronts: from the west, if the Kurds of Afrin canton seize Tal Rifaat, Azaz and surrounding areas, and from the east, where the YPG is toying with the idea of crossing the Euphrates River. An IS defeat there would seal the border with Turkey, meeting an important American objective.

 

The prospect of further Kurdish expansion has already alarmed Turkey. Over the summer, Ankara was hoping to establish a safe zone in this very area. It pressured Jabhat al-Nusra to withdraw and anointed its allies in Syria, including the prominent Islamist group Ahrar al-Sham, as its enforcers. True to its record of calculated dithering, President Barack Obama’s administration let the Turkish proposal hang until it could no longer be implemented. Turkey faces now an agonizing dilemma: watch and do nothing as a storm gathers on its border, or mount a direct intervention into Syria that would inevitably inflame its own Kurdish problem and pit it against both IS and an array of Assad-allied forces, including Russia.

 

Turkey and Saudi Arabia, the rebellion’s main supporters, are now bereft of options. No amount of weaponry is likely to change the balance of power. The introduction of anti-aircraft missiles was once a viable response against Assad’s air force, but neither country — suspecting that the United States is essentially quiescent to Moscow’s approach — is willing to escalate against President Vladimir Putin without cover.

 

Ironically, this momentous change in battlefield dynamics is occurring just as U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura yet again pushes a diplomatic track in Geneva. But the developments on the ground threaten to derail the dapper diplomat’s peace scheme. Fairly or not, de Mistura is tainted by the fact that the United Nations is discredited in the eyes of many Syrians for the problematic entanglements of its Damascus humanitarian arm with the regime. Despite U.N. resolutions, international assistance still does not reach those who need it most; in fact, aid has become yet another instrument of Assad’s warfare. Neither Kerry nor de Mistura are willing to seriously pressure Russia and Assad for fear of jeopardizing the stillborn Geneva talks.

 

Seemingly unfazed by this controversy, de Mistura’s top-down approach relies this time on an apparent U.S.-Russian convergence. At the heart of this exercise is Washington’s ever-lasting hope that Russian frustration with Assad would somehow translate into a willingness to push him out. However, whether Putin likes his Syrian counterpart has always been immaterial. The Russian president certainly has reservations about Assad, but judging by the conduct of his forces in Chechnya and now in Syria, these are about performance– not humanitarian principles or Assad’s legitimacy. For the time being, Moscow understands that without Assad, there is no regime in Damascus that can legitimize its intervention.

 

Ever since 2011, the United States has hidden behind the hope of a Russian shift and closed its eyes to Putin’s mischief to avoid the hard choices on Syria. When the Russian onslaught started, U.S. officials like Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken predicted a quagmire to justify Washington’s passivity. If Russia’s intervention was doomed to failure, after all, the United States was not on the hook to act.

 

Russia, however, has been not only been able to increase the tempo of its military operations, but also to justify the mounting cost. And contrary to some pundits, who hailed the Russian intervention as the best chance to check the expansion of IS, Washington knows all too well that the result of the Russian campaign is the strengthening of the jihadist group in central Syria in the short term. This is a price Washington seems willing to pay for the sake of keeping the Geneva process alive.

 

The bankruptcy of U.S. policy goes deeper. The United States has already conceded key points about Assad’s future — concessions that Russia and the regime have been quick to pocket, while giving nothing in return. In the lead-up to and during the first days of the Geneva talks, it became clear that the United States is putting a lot more pressure on the opposition than it does on Russia, let alone Assad. Just as Russia escalates politically and militarily, the Obama administration is cynically de-escalating, and asking its allies to do so as well. This is weakening rebel groups that rely on supply networks that the U.S. oversees: In the south, the United States has demanded a decrease in weapons deliveries to the Southern Front, while in the north, the Turkey-based operations room is reportedly dormant.

 

The result is a widespread and understandable feeling of betrayal in the rebellion, whose U.S.-friendly elements are increasingly losing face within opposition circles. This could have the ironic effect of fragmenting the rebellion — after years of Western governments bemoaning the divisions between these very same groups.

 

It’s understandable for the United States to bank on a political process and urge the Syrian opposition to join this dialogue in good faith. But to do so while exposing the rebellion to the joint Assad-Russia-Iran onslaught and without contingency planning is simply nefarious. Washington seems oblivious to the simple truth that diplomacy has a cost, as does its failure — probably because this cost would carried by the rebellion, for which the United States has little respect or care anyway, and would be inherited by Obama’s successor.

 

The conditions are in place for a disastrous collapse of the Geneva talks — now delayed until late February — and a painful, bloody year in Syria. All actors understand that Obama, who has resisted any serious engagement in the country, is unlikely to change course now. And they all assume, probably rightly, that he is more interested in the appearance of a process than in spending any political capital over it. As a result, all the parties with a stake in Syria’s future are eyeing 2017, trying to position themselves for the new White House occupant. This guarantees brinksmanship, escalation, and more misery. 2016 is shaping up as the year during which Assad will lock in significant political and military gains.

 

Možda Hokajem ne vidi šumu od drveta - i ovo što Amerika radi je strategija, stragegija izlaska ("cinična deeskalacija") iz direktne i dominantne umešanosti u poslove regiona, uz povremeno taktičko, verbalno ili vojno angažovanje, više reda radi, kao odstupnica i "čuvanje obraza" spram zainteresovanih grupa domaće javnosti i saveznika na terenu. 

 

I mislim da je netačno da Vašington "ne vidi cenu", naravno da je vidi, samo neće da je plati. Cena bi mogla biti i vojni sukob sa Rusijom, zašto bi to radili zbog Sirije? 

 

 

“‘What do you want me to do? Go to war with Russia? Is that what you want?’” the aid worker said Kerry told her

Edited February 7, 2016 by Prospero

[Prospero]

Aj kad već kalemim postove neka i ovoga, Džošua Lendis i Stiven Sajmon za Foreign Affairs

 

 

Assad Has It His Way

 

President Bashar al-Assad is winning in Syria. Russia has shifted the balance of power there dramatically. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and the UN might insist that Assad negotiate with his opponents and ultimately cede power to them, but the Syrian president has no intention of accepting such demands. His advisers state that he will go to talks in Geneva this month “to listen, but not to negotiate.” In other words, he is still out for victory on the battlefield. As the United States enters the now delayed UN negotiating process, it will have to stay flexible in its expectations and objectives in light of the shifting military balance on the ground.

 

The main reason for Assad’s renewed confidence is a clear reversal of military fortune. Three months ago, Assad’s army was beleaguered. A large confederation of jihadist and Islamist militias calling themselves the Victory Army had achieved something resembling unity. Built around Syria’s two strongest militias—al-Nusra, al Qaeda’s Syria franchise; and Ahrar al-Sham, the most powerful Salafi militia in the country—the Victory Army conquered two strategic northern cities, Idlib and Jisr al-Shughour, in quick succession this spring. These victories attracted many other militias into their orbit and promised success. The expulsion of regime forces from Jisr al-Shughour not only meant the independence of Idlib more generally but put Latakia, a regime stronghold, in serious jeopardy. The new resistance army seemed to overcome the opposition’s chronic fragmentation; it was also well armed and supported by the region’s Sunni states.

 

But Assad’s greatest advantage—a fragmented opposition divided into more than 1,000 constantly feuding militias—seems to be back. Recently, over 20 rebel militia leaders have been assassinated, most by a breakaway faction of the Victory Army. The militias that the United States trained and armed at great expense have been crushed, not by Assad but by other rebels.

 

Meanwhile, Russia’s advanced aircraft, helicopters, and tanks have been pounding the Victory Army for months. Russian aircrews fly close to 200 sorties a day, allowing Assad and his allies to go on the offensive in both the north and south of Syria. Ahrar al-Sham has agreed to go to talks in Geneva, an about-face, after snubbing the UN envoy Staffan de Mistura as an Assad lackey only months ago. Al Qaeda’s Syria leader pronounced those who head to Geneva guilty of “high treason,” a clear death threat but also an indicator of clear anxiety. Another sign of desperation was the call put out by the Victory Army to foreign fighters to come join their ranks. Non-jihadist members of the coalition were infuriated by this tactic, which would inevitably associate them with the self-proclaimed Islamic State (also known as ISIS), and withdrew from the coalition. Assad, in short, is dividing his enemies and counting on his ability to pick off one at a time.

 

To be sure, Assad’s advances have been hard fought and slower in coming than his advisers insisted they would be. The reason is the state of the Syrian army, which is in shambles, worn down by years of fighting, poverty, and corruption. All the same, it is hard to imagine Assad losing or being thrown back to some Alawite ethnic canton.

 

The real question is how much of Syria Assad can retake. Assad believes that the Russians will carry him to the finish line, but that is not at all certain. The Syrian regime already rules over some 75 percent of Syria’s Arab population. Assad seems convinced that he can bully the remaining 25 percent into “accepting” the bitterness of defeat in exchange for the end to deprivation and war. But that will likely take years. Much depends on Turkey and the Gulf states, the primary sponsors of the rebels.

Syria’s Kurds may also accommodate themselves to Assad. They constitute ten percent of the population and live in a long ribbon of territory dividing Syria from Turkey that they have named Rojava. Despite wresting the land from Assad, ISIS, and the rebel militias at great cost, the Kurds may accept autonomy within a Syrian state rather than independence as the price of protection against Turkey. Assad, too, may find a Kurdish enclave a useful buffer against Turkey.

 

Most important to Assad has been the attitude of the United States. U.S. President Barack Obama’s first reaction to Russia’s entry into the war on September 30 was to state, "We're not going to make Syria into a proxy war between the U.S. and Russia.” This was consistent with the administration’s long-standing reluctance to go beyond its current support for a small number of armed groups opposed to the Assad regime. Moscow has had a long and important relationship with Damascus; Washington has not.

 

But Obama has not ceded Syria to Russia entirely; rather, he established a tacit division of labor, by which the United States combats ISIS in the east of the country while Russia combats Assad’s foes in the west. Moreover, Obama believes Russia will fail in its endeavor to restore Assad’s control over the country as surely as it failed in Afghanistan in 1979. The fight will become a “quagmire,” he predicted, which will force the Russians to come back to the United States for a negotiated solution. He might be right.

 

Although Moscow would doubtless favor a negotiated solution that preserved the Assad regime, Russian officials dismiss the notion that Syria can be likened to Afghanistan or even to Iraq; rather, they insist that the better analogy is Chechnya, where Russia’s superior airpower devastated the rebels at Grozny. After all, they argue, no one is arming the Syrian opposition with antiaircraft weapons, as U.S. President Ronald Reagan did the Afghan mujahideen and Arab jihadists.

 

The war of analogies rages on a second front as well. The U.S. administration’s unwillingness to get involved as a combatant in Syria’s civil war—and not to make Syria into a proxy war between the United States and Russia—is explained as a desire to avoid Iraq redux. But in thinking analogically, the president’s critics say, Obama has mistakenly assumed that the cost of intervention will replicate the steep price paid by the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan. Accordingly, the president’s alleged fixation on Iraq has blinded him to the costs of inaction, which are on display now in Syria and more broadly within the region: a humanitarian disaster, the empowerment of Russian President Vladimir Putin, ISIS’ emergence, Assad’s smug survival, and the anguished disappointment and resentment of traditional allies.

 

Radicalization was not the result of the United States’ inaction. Obama could do nothing to keep the opposition from radicalizing or from forming myriad militias based on clan, village, and tribal loyalty. Yet despite their bitter sniping, it seems unlikely that Putin’s activism will lead Israel or allies in the Gulf to distance themselves from the United States. Having favorably compared Russia’s indiscriminate use of force in Syria with U.S. reticence, Israeli officials are now fuming over Russia’s transfer of weapons and know-how to Hezbollah, Israel’s sworn adversary. And as far as the Gulf states are concerned, Putin’s on the wrong side in the Syrian civil war. Within Syria, the United States long found Russia’s military presence to be a manageable problem in the context of U.S. security requirements in the eastern Mediterranean. Why the presence of a much weaker Russia within a shattered country whose rump government can’t threaten Israel or Jordan, let alone Turkey, should induce panic is unclear. The limited threat to U.S. interests would not seem to be a compelling reason to plunge into someone else’s civil war.

 

It’s also unclear what the appropriate analogy might be, if not Iraq. The Balkans intervention took place under very different circumstances, when Russia was too weak, distracted, and dependent on Western aid to get in the way. Libya as an analogy is scarcely more encouraging than Iraq. The Saudi intervention in Yemen is unlikely to result in a more stable and habitable country.

 

The cost of inaction, where inaction is defined as the failure to turn the rebels toward the West and empower Syria’s moderates by providing them with arms and money early on, is difficult to assess. The assertion that the United States has already taken on such costs assumes that had the United States done something, the Russians would not have intervened, the armed opposition would be unified, jihadists marginalized, and Assad on the ropes.

 

But radicalization was not the result of the United States’ inaction. Obama could do nothing to keep the opposition from radicalizing or from forming myriad militias based on clan, village, and tribal loyalty. The same process of radicalization and fragmentation has taken place in every Middle Eastern country where the state has been overthrown by force, whether in Iraq, Yemen, or Libya. Although Syrian liberals do exist, they are not numerous enough or strong enough to take power and hold the country together. In every instance, foreign-driven regime change has led to state collapse, social fragmentation, and radicalization.

 

Unfortunately, Middle Eastern potentates have built states that are a reflection of themselves; they collapse when the dictator and his family are changed. They do not have professional civil services and are not built on solid institutional foundations. Regime change brings state collapse. This is what happened when Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was overthrown, it happened with the destruction of the regime of Libyan dictator Muammar al-Qaddafi, and it would happen in Syria. Getting rid of Assad and his ruling clique would likely lead to state collapse, which is precisely why both the Iranians and the Russians will not risk it. Think of what Saudi Arabia would become without the Al Saud. Even Jordan would likely come unglued without the Hashemite monarchy to bind together its disparate parts. The radicalization and chaos in the Middle East is the United States’ fault to the extent that it has pursued too much regime change, not because it has pursued too little.

 

To judge how incompetent the rebels have been in providing a viable or attractive alternative to Assad, one need merely consider the situation in the province of Idlib, where the rebels rule. Schools have been segregated, women forced to wear veils, and posters of Osama bin Laden hung on the walls. Government offices were looted, and a more effective government has yet to take shape. With the Talibanization of Idlib, the 100-plus Christian families of the city fled. The few Druze villages that remained have been forced to denounce their religion and embrace Islam; some of their shrines have been blown up. No religious minorities remain in rebel-held Syria, in Idlib, or elsewhere. Rebels argue that Assad’s bombing has ensured their failure and made radicalization unavoidable. But such excuses can go only so far to explain the terrible state of rebel Syria or its excesses. We have witnessed the identical evolution in too many other Arab countries to pin it solely on Assad, despite his culpability for the disaster that has engulfed his country.

Edited February 7, 2016 by Prospero

[Muwan]

Problem svih ovih genijalnih analiza je u tome što polaze od toga da se na svakom žarištu u svetu još uvek za sve pita samo i isključivo predsednik SAD, pa ono što on odluči ili ne odluči određuje sudbinu čitave stvari. U njihovim analizama kompletno ne postoje ni Iran, ni Rusija, ni bilo koji drugi igrač, i niko od njih nema neke svoje planove nego se uključuju samo ukoliko američki predsednik pokaže slabost pa im otvori prostor da nešto ulešinare. Prema dotičnim analitičarima, ako Rusija nije htela da izađe na crtu SAD u Iraku ili Avganistanu to automatski znači da više nikada i nigde neće smeti da im izađu na crtu osim ako u Belu kuću dođe musliman™ koji će uništiti sve tekovine američke izuzetnosti i ostaviti Putinu potpuno neočekivanu priliku da nešto ušićari.

[namenski]

 

 

I mislim da je netačno da Vašington "ne vidi cenu", naravno da je vidi, samo neće da je plati. Cena bi mogla biti i vojni sukob sa Rusijom, zašto bi to radili zbog Sirije? 

 

 

Zasto bi to radili zbog bilo koga, sve dok mogu da u sukobe napujdaju druge.

I da se pobrinu pumpajuci besomucno i medijski i na sve druge nacine, da ti drugi budu presrecni sto su avangarda svekolike naprednosti, donosioci tekovina...

[Prospero]

@Beowl
 
Pa Lendis kaže upravo suprotno od toga što ti tvrdiš da se kaže:
 

Obama could do nothing to keep the opposition from radicalizing or from forming myriad militias based on clan, village, and tribal loyalty. The same process of radicalization and fragmentation has taken place in every Middle Eastern country where the state has been overthrown by force, whether in Iraq, Yemen, or Libya.

Uostalom, ovi tekstovi nisu na istoj liniji, ne znam zašto ih ocenjuješ u jednom potezu.

[Bane5]

Emile Hokayem je odlican poznavalac dogadjaja na i oko ME i oko dogadjaja u Siriji i ne spada u one koji po svaku cenu 'drze' neku stranu.

[dillinger]

Problem svih ovih genijalnih analiza je u tome što polaze od toga da se na svakom žarištu u svetu još uvek za sve pita samo i isključivo predsednik SAD, pa ono što on odluči ili ne odluči određuje sudbinu čitave stvari. U njihovim analizama kompletno ne postoje ni Iran, ni Rusija, ni bilo koji drugi igrač, i niko od njih nema neke svoje planove nego se uključuju samo ukoliko američki predsednik pokaže slabost pa im otvori prostor da nešto ulešinare. Prema dotičnim analitičarima, ako Rusija nije htela da izađe na crtu SAD u Iraku ili Avganistanu to automatski znači da više nikada i nigde neće smeti da im izađu na crtu osim ako u Belu kuću dođe musliman™ koji će uništiti sve tekovine američke izuzetnosti i ostaviti Putinu potpuno neočekivanu priliku da nešto ušićari.

 

Ko prvi uđe, njegovo, a ovom drugom ne pada na pamet da se direktno konfrotira. Linija argumentacije ide valjda putem zašto nije odgreagovao kad je mogao:

 

 

i kad je establišment to zahtevao od njega.

 

 

 

 

 

Sad će ga prozivaju kao nejakog, očekivano.

 

 

 

Rusi jesu u datom momentu izveli preokret, dobili bitku na diplomatskom planu: obećali su uklanjanje hemijskog oružja iz Asadovih ruku. Ali opet, na Obami je bilo da odluči. On je odlučio da je to dovoljno i opozvao je svoj predlog Kongresu.

Edited February 7, 2016 by dillinger

[Muwan]

@Beowl

 

Pa Lendis kaže upravo suprotno od toga što ti tvrdiš da se kaže:

 

Uostalom, ovi tekstovi nisu na istoj liniji, ne znam zašto ih ocenjuješ u jednom potezu.

 

Zato što se u njima konstantno na finjaka provlači neka teza da je Husein™ slabić, pa pošto je on slabić (a uz to i musliman) onda je mačo čvrstorukaš Putin namirisao krv pa mu je utrčao u avliju i sad mu ruši sneška. Čak i kada mu priznaju da nije bilo teorije da Amerika nekako iskontroliše sve pobunjeničke frakcije onda ga između redova razapinju za to što Rusi sada vilene po Siriji. A kada ih neko pita: "Dobro, kako biste vi sprečili Ruse da vilene?" oni pričaju o nekim no-fly zonama jbt, kao da to funkcioniše tako što SAD unilateralno proglase no-fly zonu iznad treće zemlje i onda se Putin pokupi i ode kući. Pa Ronald Regan, koji je bio u fazonu da Sovjete treba satrti Prvim udarom ako okolnosti tako nalože, nije bio u fazonu da ih treba poklapati svuda u svetu i ne dozvoljavati im da bilo gde prdnu, a sad Obama treba to da sprovodi?

 

Kad uzmeš da čitaš te njihove uratke, pitaš se da li oni zapravo žale za time što će Asad da se izvuče ili za time što Rusi neće dobiti po nosu (pa koliko god sirijskih života treba ugraditi u taj sveti trijumf nad Rusima). Ta njihova opsednutost ruskim baukom je divna stvar za unutrašnju upotrebu ali to ne znači da izvan Teksasa ima neku realnu vrednost.

[Prospero]

Ja samo mogu da ponovim da nisu svi autori ni tekstovi isti, ni inače ni oni kačeni na topiku. Ne znam šta drugo da ti kažem.

 

Naravno da znam šta (sve) priželjkuje medijsko krilo War Party-ja.
 
 
 
 
Btw, jel ovo Redžep ucenjuje Huseina™?
 

Erdogan: US should choose between Turkey, Kurdish forces
By Associated Press February 7 at 6:34 AM

ANKARA, Turkey — Turkey’s president has lashed out at the United States a week after a President Barack Obama’s envoy visited a northern Syrian town that is under the control of Syrian Kurdish forces, which Ankara considers terrorists.

In comments published Sunday, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Washington should choose between Turkey and the Kurdish Democratic Union Party, or PYD, as its partner.

That came after envoy Brett McGurk’s visit to Kobani, where the PYD’s military wing, aided by U.S.-led airstrikes, drove back Islamic State militants a year ago. Turkey considers PYD a terror group because of its affiliation with Turkey’s outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK.

Erdogan said: “How can we trust you? Is it me that is your partner or is it the terrorists in Kobani?”

Edited February 7, 2016 by Prospero

[Muwan]

Ne znam čime bi mogao da ga ucenjuje. Mislim da pre hoće da podvuče domaćoj i svetskoj javnosti da poseta američkog izaslanika Kobaneu ne znači da će sirijski Kurdi nešto dobiti.

[namenski]

Onako, iz glave, a glede prva dva meseca ruske intervencije u Siriji, nakupilo se nesto koliko-toliko pouzdanih (tehnickih) informacija.

Pa tako, na primer, rusko delovanje tamo, gledano sa tehnicke strane, je pokazalo poprilicno nedostataka, ali i demantovalo neka uvrezena misljenja: pokazalo se da su ruski piloti poslednjih godina imali znatno vise casova letenja u odnosu na sirotinjske 90-te. 2013. i 2014. se vec doslo od 110 pa i 130 sati. 

Rusi su sebi dodelili vojni deo Bassel al-Assad International Airport, nekih 25 km juzno od Latakije, inace najvece sirijske luke. Iako ima 2 PSS, aerodrom je kratak sa mogucnostima skladistenja municije i sklonistima pa je tako ruska borbena grupa od 36 borbenih i 1 ELINT/SIGINT aviona rasporedjena na otvorenom; 10-ak kilometara severno sagradjen je novi heliport za smestaj grupe od 14 helikoptera.
Onaj 1 u svakom slucaju nedovoljan, bar po zapadnim standardima, AWACS avion, dopunjen je protivvazdusnom odbranom koja se ocekuje od komada 4 Su-30SM, krstarice Moskva i postrojenja sistema S-400 teorijskog dometa od 400 km, ali sa problematicnim radarskim pokrivanjem buduci da je postavljeno prakticno na obali mora i na jednu stranu poprilicno ograniceno 2000 metara visokim planinama Antilibana.
Uprkos dopremanju u Siriju poprilicno, nekoliko desetina UAV, Rusi imaju poprilican problem sa pronalazenjem ciljeva na teritorijama na kojima uglavnom deluju.
Interesantno je, pada u oci izuzetno mali broj poletanja Mi-24 helikoptera: koliko se zna, izmedju kraja septembra i sredine novembra 2015. preko 90% od 2,000 borbenih letova otpada na avione, a ceni se da izmedju procedura angazovanja letelica, od izdavanja naredjenja do poletanja na zadatak trajala izmedju 36 i 48 sati, dok delovanje aviona ili grupe aviona po jednom ili vise ciljeva tokom jednog leta nije uopste upraznjavano, sto ukazuje na poprilicno dramatican nedostatak informacija dobijenih u realnom vremenu, ali i poprilicnu rupu u sakupljanju istih i njihovom pravovremenom dostavljanju avionima na poslu. Dodatno, potvrdjen je i izvestan broj napada na snage verne Asadovom rezimu, podatak koji u uslovima gradjanskog rata i konfuzije koja ga prati mozda i nije od znacaja za procenu sposobnosti ruske ekspedicije.
U svakom slucaju, postoji poprilicno osnovana sumnja na slabe komandne i kontrolne kapacitete sto se bez daljnjeg odrazava i na ogranicene mogucnosti procene stanja na terenu, ali i na borbenu efikasnost.
Neke od ovih pretpostavki su i potvrdjene, pa je tako zabelezen i prvi susret 2 USAF F-22 aviona sa 2 Su-30SM iznad Sirije, krajem oktobra 2015. F-22 su prisli na oko 2.5 kilometara ruskim letelicama pre nego sto su bilo vizuelno otkriveni, dok je pocetkom oktobra zabelezeno poprilicno kasno kacenje Su-27 radara na turske avione F-16 koji su patrolirali duz sirijske granice.
Americka centralna komanda CENTCOM koja raspolaze velikim brojem razlicitih sredstava kao sto su radari sa mogucnoscu gledanja iza horizonta, AWACS avioni i UAV dugog dometa, potvrdila je da ta sredstva ulaze dublje i ostaju duze u sirijskom vazdusnom prostoru nego Rusi i da ta cinjenica omogucava americkim borbenim avionima mnogo ranije otkrivanje ruskih aviona nego obrnuto.

[vathra]

Наменски, ако мислиш на Ил-20 он није АВАКС, нити је Русима тренутно потребан такав авион у Сирији.

 

Што се тиче мањег броја полетања Ми-24 ствар је очигледна ако се погледа на мапу: Сирија је огромна, а руске снаге су ангажоване практично по целој територији - за коју хеликоптери немају довољан долет.

[Budja]

@Beowl

 

Pa Lendis kaže upravo suprotno od toga što ti tvrdiš da se kaže:

 

Uostalom, ovi tekstovi nisu na istoj liniji, ne znam zašto ih ocenjuješ u jednom potezu.

 

Tako je.

 

Drugi tekst je dobar, prvi je upravo ono sto Beowl kaze - neko iz state departmenta zaglavljen u 1990.

[Anduril]

 

Obama’s Disastrous Betrayal of the Syrian Rebels

 

How the White House is handing victory to Bashar al-Assad, Russia, and Iran.

• BY EMILE HOKAYEM

• FEBRUARY 5, 2016

.....................................

 

Aj kad već kalemim postove neka i ovoga, Džošua Lendis i Stiven Sajmon za Foreign Affairs

 

 

Ne znam da li je bilo, ali ovo dole dodje kao protivargument i dosta dobro objasnjava kako razmisljaju oko Obame:

 

 

The End of Pax Americana

Why Washington’s Middle East Pullback Makes Sense

Steven Simon and Jonathan Stevenson

STEVEN SIMON is a Visiting Lecturer at Dartmouth College and served as Senior Director for Middle Eastern and North African Affairs at the White House from 2011 through 2012. JONATHAN STEVENSON is Professor of Strategic Studies at the U.S. Naval War College and served as Director for Political-Military Affairs for the Middle East and North Africa on the U.S. National Security Council staff from 2011 to 2013.

The Obama administration has clearly pulled back from the United States’ recent interventionism [1] 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 [2]. 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 [3] 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.

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.

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 [4] 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.

 

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 [5]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 [6], 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.

 

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 [7] 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 [8]—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.

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 [9], 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.

 

But each player has also come to realize that its preferred method of solving the Syrian crisis is probably unworkable [10]. 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 [11], 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 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 [12]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.

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.

 

Ako dodje do kolapsa rebela oko Alepa, onda tekst ipak polazi od bar jedne pogresne premise...

Vreme ce pokazati.

Edited February 7, 2016 by Anduril

[namenski]

Наменски, ако мислиш на Ил-20 он није АВАКС, нити је Русима тренутно потребан такав авион у Сирији.

 

Што се тиче мањег броја полетања Ми-24 ствар је очигледна ако се погледа на мапу: Сирија је огромна, а руске снаге су ангажоване практично по целој територији - за коју хеликоптери немају довољан долет.

Mislim na Berijev A-50 i ne mislim da im nije potreban: ruska praksa doduse ne drzi toliko do upotrebe AWACS-a po zapadnim standardima, ali je takav avion Rusima u Siriji preko potreban pre svega zbog neprijateljskog okruzenja/pretnje, Turske pre svega, a i ostale treba drzati na oku.

Nedostajanje AWACS-a je, ovako ili onako indikacija, naravno da ne mogu da tvrdim nista odredjeno, ne moze niko pa verovatno ni sami Rusi, videcemo sta ce eventualno da menjaju, ako po nesto vec nisu.

Za helikoptere si u pravu, ali njihova neupotreba ipak donekle ukazuje na cinjenicu da Rusi imaju problem sa komandovanjem i kontrolom u realnom vremenu.