Strife

The Academic Blog of the Department of War Studies, King's College London

You are here: Home / Archives for Russia

Russia

Could protracted conflict in Syria be in the national interest of the United States?

by

By Eugenio Lilli:

111024073306_us-syria-640x360-16x9

In a recent talk I chaired at King’s College London, a prominent American expert on US foreign policy described the crisis in Syria as a ‘no good option crisis’ for the United States.

Similarly, in a February piece on the web magazine War On The Rocks, the authors argued that,

‘With chemical weapons off the table, Assad’s external opposition in disarray, Islamists dominating the insurgency, and an American public unhappy with foreign wars, the Obama administration feels it has few options other than taking steps to prevent the civil war from destabilizing Syria’s neighbours and harming U.S. security.’

There seems to be general agreement in western foreign policy circles about the fact that the complex nature of the Syrian crisis has left the United States with limited leverage to bring the violence to an end. In other words, the United States does want to stop the fighting but international and domestic factors have prevented it from doing so.

What if, instead, Washington was actually benefiting from the protracted confrontation in Syria?

The mainstream debate has not seriously contemplated the possibility that, in fact, the Obama administration has come to the conclusion that the US best option in Syria is to let the confrontation continue. This is not to say that Washington’s concern about the deteriorating humanitarian situation in the country is not sincere. The United States has indeed repeatedly tried, especially through diplomatic means, to stop the ongoing violence. However, both the failure of successive diplomatic initiatives and developments on the ground might have changed the perception of the Syrian crisis in the minds of US officials. Over time, humanitarian concerns might have been superseded by security ones. While blunt, it is a fact that the history of international relations is filled with examples where states’ concerns about the protection of lofty principles were sacrificed on the altar of the pursuit of strategic interests. In this regard, the post-WWII foreign policy of the United States toward the Middle East is a case in point: i.e. the 1953 US/British coup to oust the democratically-elected Iranian Premier Mohammad Mossadeq and replace him with the dictatorial regime of the shah, or the US/Western blind eye to Saddam Hussein’s use of chemical weapons against Iraqi Kurds while Saddam was fighting the Islamic Republic of Iran in the 1980s).

Could the Syrian crisis be yet another example of this trend? And if it is, what US strategic interest would be best served by the continued conflict in the country?

The answer to these questions lies in understanding the contentious relationship between the United States and the actors involved in Syria. Russia, Iran, the Assad regime, Hezbollah, and a variety of Sunni extremist groups (some of them admittedly linked to al Qaeda) represent active parties to the conflict. Prior to the 2011 uprising, these actors were competing in different ways with the United States for influence in the region of the Greater Middle East. President Putin wanted to reassert Russia’s regional power status and have a say in Middle Eastern affairs. Leaders in Tehran clashed with the United States and its local allies to increase Iran’s sway across the region. President Assad and the Shiite party-cum-militia Hezbollah were a continued threat to the security of Israel, ostensibly Washington’s principal Middle Eastern ally. Finally, the profound anti-Americanism of some Sunni extremist groups, especially of those local franchises of al Qaeda such as Jabhat al-Nusra, was not a secret.

The outbreak of the Syrian uprising markedly changed these regional dynamics. While none of the aforementioned actors has ceased to represent a challenge to US influence in the Greater Middle East, the relations among such actors have been significantly affected. Before 2011, Russia, Iran, the Assad regime, Hezbollah, and Sunni extremist groups were by no means allies and were not part of a united anti-US front, however, they were not at war with one another. Today, after three years of bloody confrontations in Syria, a clear divide exists among those fighting on the side of the Assad government and those fighting against it.

On the one side, Russian and Iranian open support for the Syrian regime against a mostly Sunni uprising has tarnished the two countries’ image in the eyes of Sunni Arab communities. The Assad government and Hezbollah’s violent repression of the Syrian uprising has come at the expense of their reputation as regional defenders of all Arabs against US and Israeli oppression. On the other side, Sunni extremist groups are now avowed enemies of the pro-Assad camp that they now perceive as being an anti-Sunni camp. Sunni Hamas, for example, broke its ties with the regime in Damascus in February 2012, while the Sunni, al Qaeda-linked Abdullah Azzam Brigades has claimed responsibility for a number of recent attacks against Iranian targets in Lebanon. Significantly, for the purpose of this article, it is important to notice that the Syrian civil war has also resulted in profound fissures among different Sunni groups within the anti-Assad opposition, especially between the more extremist Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and the relatively more moderate Islamic Front (IF).

In other words, developments in Syria have significantly diverted these actors’ attention from challenging the United States to fighting among themselves. The Obama administration might have reasoned that the old Roman strategy of the divide et impera could well apply to the current Syrian crisis and eventually benefit the United States. In fact, whatever the future outcome of the crisis, the sharp polarization of the actors involved in the Syrian conflict has weakened their regional influence. This is not only due to the high human, economic, and political costs of sustaining the war but perhaps primarily to the effects that the protracted crisis has on their image and legitimacy across the Arab world.

 

______________________

Eugenio Lilli is a PhD Candidate at the Defence Studies Department, King’s College London. His research focuses on US foreign policy toward the Greater Middle East, in particular on the Obama administration’s response to the Arab Awakening. Eugenio is also the founding chairperson of the King’s College London US Foreign Policy Research Group.

Obama, NATO and the Brussels Response

by

By Zachary Wolfraim:

president-obama_1
U.S. President Barack Obama holds a speech at Bozar concert hall in Brussels, 26 March, 2014 (photo: Yves Herman/Reuters)

Editor’s note: On Wednesday, March 26, US President Obama visited Brussels to recommit his position to the NATO alliance. This piece is a response by a former NATO consultant who attended the event.

*

This speech was initially meant to discuss the transatlantic relationship, events in the Ukraine conspired to turn the event into a compelling, albeit professorial comment on the current state of transatlantic affairs. There were hints of the speech’s initial focus, highlighting the importance and endurance of the transatlantic relationship, however, mixed into this was also messaging directed at Russian critics of American power as well as a warning for the young people in the audience to not take the freedoms and prosperity we in the West enjoy, for granted. Obama couched all of these in the importance of freedom and in the framework of a respect for international law. All requisite credit to his speechwriters, he managed to do so relatively well, if not in the most dynamic fashion. Altogether, there were no surprising elements to his speech, furthermore, there was none of the previous spark and verve that has previously characterized Obama’s remarks to a young(ish) crowd.

The first key, and arguably most critical theme, was the importance of the transatlantic relationship between the US and Europe. In light of events in Crimea, this is a refrain that the US leadership has been repeating at NATO and throughout the President’s trip. After several years of Obama’s much-publicised Pacific ‘pivot’, Obama needed to reiterate to NATO Allies that the US will not turn away from Europe and that the security of the continent remained clearly in the US national interest. This of course came with the requisite warnings over European burden sharing which certainly take on greater importance given the EU’s relative impotence in the face of Russian belligerence. Nonetheless, while the US will not disengage from the NATO Alliance, European capitols should be concerned about a degree of US retrenchment after the Alliance’s Afghanistan and Libya adventures. That said, Obama correctly did not suggest any concrete realignment of US priorities regarding Europe. Given the sorry state of European defense capabilities and continued recession-driven cuts, Europe not only needs to demonstrate a greater unity of purpose, but also that it possesses its own robust capabilities to hold up its end of the transatlantic relationship.

The second key element was targeted at Moscow and sought to quiet the Russian criticism of the US. Russian leaders and commentators have sought to characterize the US and more broadly the Western response, as hypocritical. In highlighting the Iraq and Kosovo examples Obama aimed to blunt Russian criticism as, right or wrong, both conflicts were firmly situated in international fora, be it the UN, NATO or the International Court of Justice. This line of reasoning remains a bit fuzzy when one considers the legal grey areas US foreign policy still inhabits (NSA spying, drone strikes, Guantanamo etc…). Nonetheless, it highlights that the Russian pot calling the American kettle black is a weak defense of what still remains an egregious violation of international norms. Obama’s stronger gambit was to emphasise that this is not an effort by the West to undermine Russia but rather it was in our collective interest to see a “strong and responsible Russia, not a weak one.” In expressing a desire to move beyond the Cold War style rhetoric and trying to move past the language of zero sum games, it ideally helps to create some space in which dialogue can occur. Whether this elicits any kind of Russian response however remains to be seen, though scepticism is not unwarranted.

The final key element was an exhortation of the youths in Western nations to take up the torch of our forebears and defend the freedom and liberties for which they fought and died. He referenced the battlefields of northern Europe that attest to the price paid for the society of which we are now part. Despite the powerful imagery invoked, this was perhaps the most tepid part of the speech. There is a compelling case to be made about the engagement of all people in the defense of our freedoms, not just the younger generation. Obama’s warning about the parochial disputes that currently threaten the European project was well made, but this is not something that should concern only the next generation of leaders and voters, but all Europeans. Moreover, the younger generation that Obama sought to reach out to, the one which has suffered disproportionately from the economic downturn, runs the risk of becoming the most cynical and disengaged if governments remain unresponsive. This is why this element of the speech was arguably the weak link – in light of what has happened in the Crimea there needed to be a reminder to the audience that while we are all ‘heirs to the struggle for freedom’, all of us in the Western world have greater things at stake, young and old.

In the wake of the speech there was discussion among the audience as to whether this was a pivotal speech in the response to Russian aggression. Such a verdict is hard to render without context and perhaps more vitally, without Russian response. Obama sought to underline the importance of international order and his call for the vigilant defense of our freedoms is right, that said, no one should be under the illusion that Russia will surrender the Crimea. While Obama may cast the West as defenders of freedom, truth and prosperity it would be naive to assume that this is any more compelling than Russia’s counter-narratives of an greedy, arrogant West that has previously run roughshod over international law when it suited them. At the very least, NATO can breathe easy as it vindicates the move towards ‘NATO Prepared’ which reorients the Alliance towards readiness and crisis response and thus ensures its continued relevance. Fundamentally, the speech does not represent a sea-change in American policy towards Europe nor will it assuage critics of Obama who have sought to cast him as too dovish towards Russia. Nonetheless, in highlighting the importance of international norms like the ‘responsibility to protect’ and their ability to be twisted, it reminds Europe that that there are major fundamental issues at stake in the Crimea that go beyond simple questions of economics or national interest. Sadly, given the tide of anti-EU populism sweeping through Europe it is possible that this message has fallen on deaf ears.

 

Zachary Wolfraim is a third year PhD student in the War Studies Department, King’s College London, where he focuses on the role of narratives in shaping foreign policy in relation to NATO operations. He previously worked as a consultant in NATO Headquarters on operations in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.

Why Russia does what it can and Ukraine will suffer what it must

by

By Avram Lytton:

At the moment of writing, Russian troops have completed a de facto annexation of the Crimean Peninsula. Ukrainian military installations are holding out but are under siege. A referendum is to be held in a few days to determine whether the Crimea should join the Russian Federation or not. The outcome seems certain. Meanwhile, Russia has refused to recognise the government in Kiev and has proceeded with a rolling series of military drills. Pro-Russian agitation, small in numbers, but likely supported by Moscow, has continued in parts of Eastern Ukraine. This provides the Kremlin with a flimsy excuse, should it choose to exercise it, to invade and annex other parts of the country as well.

Is the West ready to stand up to these unprovoked acts of Russian aggression?

The short answer is no. US Secretary of State John Kerry recently decried Russian behaviour as being from the ‘nineteenth century’[1] while numerous others have declared Vladimir Putin to be crazy, irrational or impulsive. Western leaders should understand that Putin’s decision making is neither irrational nor somehow archaic, it is firmly planted in deep historical truths. When the Austrian Emperor Charles VI died in 1740, leaving his empire to his young daughter Maria Theresa, it did not take long for Frederick II of Prussia to invade Silesia in a blatant land grab. Legality mattered little when there was a woman on the throne and wealthy provinces up for grabs. Going further back, to Thucydides, one of the first historians, the exercise of power is illustrated starkly in his famous Melian dialogue. When Athens, in the midst of confrontation with Sparta, demanded that the (nominally) neutral island of Melos pay tribute or be destroyed, the Melians stood firm on moral, legal and religious grounds. The Athenians made the case that no one, including the gods, would come to the aid of Melos and that in reality, ‘the strong do as they can and the weak suffer what they must’.[2] Melos resisted, and Melos was destroyed.

So it is with Ukraine. Some have compared Russian interventionism now with western actions in Kosovo, Iraq, Libya and so on.[3] This argument is absurd. Recent western interventionism, while sometimes misguided, was largely based on humanitarian principles and was transient in nature. Conversely, Putin’s land grab in Ukraine is not based on anything other than the desire to increase Russian power and influence. There is no threatened Russian minority, there are no fascists coming to power in Kiev, just familiar politicians such as the newly freed Yulia Tymoshenko. The lease on the Russian naval base at Sevastopol was not threatened until it was used as a springboard to occupy the whole of the Crimea. There is no crisis except that created by the Kremlin, using the recent upheaval in Kiev as a pretext, in order to justify its bald faced exercise of power.

How should the West respond?

As illustration, I will provide another example from antiquity. In 168 BC, as the Seleucid King Antiochus IV led his army to Alexandria and looked about to triumph over his enemy, the Ptolemaic dynasty of Egypt, he was approached by a Consul of the Roman Republic. Drawing a line in the sand, the Consul made Antiochus understand that if he continued on to Alexandria, he would have war with Rome. The Seleucid army withdrew.[4] Like Antiochus IV, Vladimir Putin is rational and he knows that he cannot win a military showdown with the West (the United States). That is why such a scenario needs to be credibly threatened. A tripwire force in Ukraine proper could accomplish this, words and weak economic threats most likely will not.

However, it does not appear that anything like this is in the offing. I have written before about the risk aversion that guides the foreign policy of the Obama administration,[5] and I doubt that will change. Diplomacy is the only tool in the arsenal of the Obama White House. The trouble with this is that diplomacy follows events on the ground. If Putin is getting what he wants through the exercise of power, then there is little incentive to negotiate. The Crimea is lost, but the rest of Ukraine can still be salvaged. Limits could be put on Russian expansion and sanctions could be put in place to apply pressure on the Kremlin. Perhaps then diplomacy might accomplish something. At the moment, however, Putin is strong and the West chooses to be weak.

Avram Lytton is a PhD student in the Department of War Studies, King’s College London. His research focuses on British intelligence assessments during the First World War.

_____________________

NOTES

[1] http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/02/us-ukraine-crisis-usa-kerry-idUSBREA210DG20140302 (accessed 3 March, 2014)
2] http://www.gutenberg.org/files/7142/7142-h/7142-h.htm#link2HCH0017 (accessed 3 March, 2014)
[3] https://strifeblog.org/2014/03/02/vox-populi-vox-dei-a-few-words-on-ukraine-crimea-and-the-west/ (accessed 3 March, 2014)
[4] http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/txt/ah/Livy/Livy45.html (accessed 3 March, 2014)
[5] https://strifeblog.org/2013/11/16/why-failures-in-american-leadership-endanger-peace/ (accessed 3 March, 2014)

After the revolution: Kiev’s future role in the Eurasian heroin trade

by

By Calum Murray:

Injecting_heroin
‘Injecting Heroine’
(photo by Juan Manuel Garcia, ‘a hundred visions and revisions’)

Whilst it would be a fool’s errand to forecast success in the face of grave uncertainty, it seems at last that the Ukrainian opposition is making headway. Quite how a ‘victory’ could manifest itself, however, remains unclear. As Russia’s influence remains polarised between East and West Ukraine, it even remains possible that the country could fragment after the early election is contested.

Add to this the financial incentives and political posturing from both Moscow and Brussels and it becomes clear that this is about far more than just national self-determination. Moscow in particular has made its position clear, conducting military drills near the Ukrainian border and placing fighter squadrons on combat alert. As we all no doubt realise, the result of this revolution will ultimately set the frontiers of the European Union with Vladimir Putin’s proposed Eurasian Union.

However, in the scramble to analyse the political and strategic consequences and significance of what Hillary Clinton suggested will be ‘the new USSR’, academics and commentators alike have been slow to acknowledge the hidden danger that lies between these two supranational unions. After the revolution, Kiev could well find itself on the front line of Europe’s defence against a new wave of heroin trafficking.

Europe’s biggest source of heroin is Afghanistan, in part because it holds a 65% share in global opium cultivation, but also because its rivals in Burma (Myanmar), Laos and Mexico are too small to supply significantly beyond their own regional markets. However, routes from Afghanistan to the EU are both diverse and flexible. With three major arteries running south through Africa (the ‘Southern Route’), west through Turkey and the Balkans (the ‘Balkan Route’) and north through the Commonwealth of Independent States (the ‘Northern Route’), heroin can easily find its way to the European market.

Having been the primary route for decades, the Balkan route has been increasingly choked through counter-narcotics operations in Turkey and Iran, which has led to a substantial proliferation of heroin smuggling along the Southern route via Africa. The Northern route, by contrast, has remained relatively stable, supplying a regional Russian market.

However, the Northern Route may be set to be flooded. The reason is simple: economic unions facilitate trade of all kinds. The Schengen Agreement itself facilitates drug trafficking through Europe by removing border controls, and this is likely to proliferate on a massive scale. The proposed Eurasian Economic Area would build upon the existing Customs Union between Belarus, Russia and Kazakhstan to include Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan; thereby providing just two border controls between Afghanistan and the EU. Billed for 2016, this arrangement could dramatically increase opiate flows through Central Asia and Russia to Europe in just two years’ time.

Reports from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) have demonstrated yearly that drug interceptions amongst the Central Asian Republics are systematically compromised by state corruption and geographical constraints, particularly in Tajikistan. Coupled with the prevalence of Russian organised crime in existing heroin trafficking and the level of Russian state corruption, it would seem naïve to trust an infant Eurasian Union to be able to adequately control heroin flows through the region.

As such, the Northern Route may well emerge as a viable alternative to the long and costly Southern Route, whose recent rise has attracted the attention and reaction of the international community. Just as the squeeze on the Balkan Route fed the Southern Route, international efforts to seize drug shipments from West Africa and the Maghreb could see more Afghan heroin leave through the northern border with Tajikistan with greater frequency.

Such a situation would undoubtedly place Ukraine, or perhaps a new West Ukraine, on the front line of European counter-narcotics. With over 1,150km of borders with EU member states, Ukraine provides an excellent entry point to the European market, especially through its ability to link up with existing heroin trafficking routes through Romania and the Balkans. Additionally, its sheer size and relatively porous borders with Russia have already led to it being described somewhat hyperbolically as ‘the centre of the East-West drug trade’, whilst its comparative proximity to Central Europe would give it the edge against an EU-bound trade via Belarus.

But could Kiev control such a flow? It’s not possible to say with precision, but the outlook seems bleak. Not only are drug traffickers endlessly creative in methods to circumvent law enforcement, but Ukraine is structurally and situationally limited. Even before the revolution, the US Overseas Security Advisory Council noted that ‘limited budget [sic] resources hamper Ukraine’s ability to effectively counter this threat’ and that ‘coordination between law enforcement agencies responsible for counter-narcotics continues to be stilted due to regulatory and jurisdictional constraints’. After the revolution, either Ukraine’s new parliament or the remnants of Yanukovych’s administration will almost certainly be preoccupied with entrenching their respective regimes, putting state restructuring ahead of counter-narcotics.

Europe’s best hope, therefore, remains to support Ukraine’s pro-European movement in a bid to increase European involvement in Ukrainian policing. Europol established intelligence sharing with Ukrainian authorities in 2009, but drawing Ukraine into the EU sphere of influence would enable greater direct technical, financial and operational support from EU partners. What is certain is that drug security across Europe depends greatly on how quickly the EU can respond to this impending threat and establish effective counter-narcotics partners on its eastern frontiers.

Calum Murray is an MA student in the War Studies Department and is currently collecting open-source intelligence on drug trafficking in the EU.

_____________________________

NOTES
[1] Ukraine Crime and Safety Report, OSAC, 21st January 2012.