All posts by Number9

Russia/Iran Intelligence in Syria/Iraq

On October 7, Russia targeted Syria with 26 cruise missiles launched from the Caspian. Cost figures are not available for Russian systems, but the U.S. Tomahawk is comparable, at  $1.5M per unit. The Russian and American payloads are about 1000 lbs. A strike planner could choose gravity bombs delivered by strike fighter. The hourly incremental cost per mission of F-16 operation is about $10K. A typical payload is four 1000 lb gravity bombs. Each bomb is equipped with a JDAM (joint direct attack munition) guidance kit, which converts a dumb bomb into a precise, precision guided weapon with a range of 15 miles. The JDAM kit costs about $25k. The cost of the bomb itself is negligible. A two hour mission time delivers 4000 lbs of ordinance at about 1/40 the cost of cruise missile delivery. The use of cruise missiles by Russia is not a mere detail. It has implications.

Several legitimate reasons exist for the strike planner to choose cruise missile delivery. The press generally quotes a version of “shock and awe”, and it has a current Russian equivalent. But this is false. It just happens to be a convenient term to feed the press because they know and understand so little. Real reasons for spending all that money are:

  • The enemy has an integrated air defense. By degrading command and control, risk to follow-on manned platforms is reduced. This motivated U.S. expenditure of 220 Tomahawks at the start of the 2011 Libya intervention.
  • Decapitation strike. If hostilities are not expected by the enemy, cruise missiles provide the ultimate in stealth. An obvious requirement is very precise information as to the location of the enemy leadership.

But this is not a valid reason: to scare the hell out of rebels and/or ISIS. The skies of Syria are loud with the racket of jets. Guided gravity bombs have substantial range and excellent accuracy.

With the absolute requirement of intelligence indications of high value targets, the cruise missile strike certainly offered Russia a technology showcase. But that is secondary. It illuminates a question that is known to governments, but not to the press:  What kinds of intelligence do Russia and Iran have in the Syria/Iraq? Apparently, they have something, because a joint Russia/Iran/Iraq intelligence center has been set up in Baghdad. The answer is known to every professional with background in the region. But let’s address it here from the perspective of open-source.

Historical categories of intelligence were:

  • SIGINT – signals intelligence, eavesdropping and breaking the code
  • Aerial reconaissance, with a confusing similarity in name to military reconaissance
  • HUMINT – human intelligence, spying

Britain’s history as an island nation, with an empire that provided both cultural experience and assimilation, resulted in multicultural facility  that has never been equaled elswhere in the West. But with HUMINT, the Soviets stand alone, with the ideological lure, and their brilliant exploitation of human weakness. Even today, a CIA employee is not permitted to have a Russian girlfriend.

The U.S. relies more on technology and analysis. The technology has advanced far beyond the above nomenclature.  Analysis is a large part of the U.S. technique.  But the flood of information is so vast, the brains cannot keep up with it. Here HUMINT has the edge. In opposition to the C.I.A. emphasis on analysis, ex-Soviet spymasters take the view that all actionable information comes from spies, not analysis. This is not true. But HUMINT and technology based intelligence are highly complimentary,  a primary reason why the Russians proposed cooperation with the U.S.

Returning to the didactic purpose, what is the likelyhood that the Russians and Iranians have substantial intelligence presence in the conflict area? A spy impersonates loyalty to a cause. For the U.S. to train a spy to impersonate an Iranian is impossible. In fact, it is not done. The western model of HUMINT is recruitment, not training. Such spies as the U.S. has had in Iran were Iranians dissatisfied with the regime. But the population of the conflict area is divided:

  • Shia of native origin – southern Iraqis, Syrian Alawites who are syncretistic  Shia
  • Hezbollah, Iran’s proxy, drawn from Lebanese Shia
  • Sunni of native origin
  • Sunni of external origin, with heavy representation of Chechnya.

In this region, where the traditional model of foreign controller/native spy does not work, HUMINT requires cultural impersonation. If these groups find cultural impersonation of each other to be easy, then HUMINT is easy. If it’s easy and cheap, and hostility prevails, then spying is a matter of course. Without specific expertise, can we know whether, in this region, cultural impersonation is easy? The answer is yes. Suicide bombers require transit to within yards of the target. This is a fact of countless repetition in modern Iraq.  So an actor of any faction can pass with little effort as an actor of an opposing faction.

So spying is a matter of course. Years before the Syria conflict, Hezbollah was noted as possessing a sophisticated intelligence establishment. It also astonishes professionals with sophisticated counterintelligence capability, the significance of which may not be appreciated by the reader. Counter intelligence has always been considered the harder problem.

As Chechnya is part of Russia, Russia has the opportunity to insert sleepers into local jihadist cells. These proceed like drops of dye in the river that flows into the area, joined by a tributary that transits through Turkey. Together, Russia and Iran have a completely separate stream of intelligence that compliments and blends with political influence.

This deep penetration is the source of intelligence that motivated Russian strike planners to expend expensive missiles. The “shock and awe” theme provided to the press has some use to protect sources, at least with an unsophisticated adversary. That no decapitations were reported as a result of the 26 Russian cruise missiles reminds that no intelligence is golden until used successfully.

This is an example of the kind of analysis that can be performed without consideration of politics. It reduces a problem that appears political – why did they shoot those missiles – into one that is mostly technical. But the implication is political. U.S. strategies are challenged, perhaps fatally, by the underground rivers of HUMINT that flow through the region.

Russia in Syria Part V

By the 1813 Treaty of Gulistan the 1828 Treaty of Turkmenchay, Iran ceded all Caucasian territories to Russia. The land was lost in the worst possible way, by military defeat. Historically, this  gives rise to revanchism, the political and popular will to regain lost territory. The revanchist impulse is not presently active in Iranian politics. But as Iran is a society with a central ideological source, the theological establishment of Qom, only willful direction is required to activate the impulse. Fortunately for Russia, Iran’s expansionist impulse is directed westward, to Saudi Arabia, and beyond, accompanied by the intent that Israel should disappear. But Saudi Arabia is in the way.

The apparent stability of Saudi Arabia, and effectiveness as a bulwark against Iranian expansion, is consequent to:

  • The ruling mandate granted by the clergy to the House of Saud.
  • Vast entitlements to princelings who have multiplied exponentially.
  • Oil.

But mandates have quid-pro-quos. One of them is a “we-are-one” with Wahabism, from whence have sprung the jihadists in all their forms. Until 9/11, jihadists were tolerated, with the quid-pro-quo of no terrorism inside the kingdom. Saudi Arabia was then a political monolith. Since then, self examination by the rulers has been followed by a glacial move towards a society less beholden to the literal interpretations of Wahabism. Glacial it must be, since it involves reforming the clergy that grants the mandate to rule.

But stemming the funding of terrorism by citizens of the kingdom has been slow, and is not complete today. Across the spectrum of religious opinion, some elements still have sympathies with jihadist goals, not necessarily 9/11 attacks, but furthering the propagation of Wahabism by violent means. Some of the sponsors themselves have Western lifestyles, and are major players in the economic life of the kingdom. Their patronage resembles the buying of indulgences, so popular in the Catholic Church up to the Counter Reformation, removing the guilt of a western lifestyle. Perhaps this contradiction makes the Russians more uncomfortable than it does us.

Oil guarantees the good life and political stability. Now there is genuine concern that oil will not bounce back soon enough for stability. In “U.N. Security Council Syria Statement; Redeveloping the Assad Property” , I wrote,

  • An alleged interest in derailing the fracking business in the U.S. Skeptically, the Saudis, with their business experience and intimate knowledge of oil, must have known that fracking is an impossible target for their oil weapon, impossible because the capital needs of fracking are far smaller than the cost of their weapon.

This facilitates the argument that the primary target of the oil weapon is not fracking, but to keep Iran and Russia too poor to efficiently pursue geopolitical goals. As a goal, the destruction of Saudi Arabia, pursuant to establishment of a Shiite caliphate, fits this argument well. The caliphate, the ideal earthly Islamic State, a myth common to all sects, analogizes with the Catholic Church before the advent of the nation-state.

But now the oil weapon is exhausted. There’s plenty of oil, but not enough cash. The Saudis are borrowing (CNN), which they must do for stability. Based on entitlements and make-work jobs, the fabric of Saudi society is not resilient against the kind of western economic disaster that throws people out onto the streets. Apparently thinking that idle hands are the devil’s workshop, Saudi magnates seem desperate to start manufacturing in-country, even when and where the high cost of labor makes no economic sense.

Iran has been looking west since about 1987. The long-range outlook for the far-sighted minds of Qom looks bright:

  • Southern Iraq looks like a ripe cherry.
  • The Houthi reversals in Yemen are a minor setback that may reverse several more times.
  • Saudi Arabia, the candle that burned so bright so long, flickers and dims.

This is good news to Russia. It will take many years, if ever, for the westward drive of Iran to succeed or dissipate. During the interval, the Russian Caucasus is safe from revanchist notions. The top-down, hierarchical organization of Shi’ism, and rampant corruption in Iran comforts the Russians with similarities. It is tempting for a Russian to think, “They’re just like us.” In making war on Sunni jihadists, Iran behaves like an ideal proxy, even though it is entirely self motivated.

Typically, humans back up complicated reasoning with simplified just-in-cases. The Russian backup is balance of power. A divided Middle East implies weaker neighbors; weaker is better. But does the reasoning precede the goal, with meaningful alternatives,  or merely rationalize it? Instead of dividing the Middle East, an alternative strategy might attempt to maximize Russian influence. But that would require a Sunni ally. What nation-state candidates exist?

  • Egypt has no convenient land bridge to the conflict.
  • Saudi Arabia doesn’t have a strong nationalist core.
  • Jordan is too small.

In Turkey & the New Ottoman Empire, I wrote,

“Perhaps the Turks would like to try their hand. Since Erdoğan has asserted that Assad must go, Syria, with a complete governmental vacuum, would be  most tightly bound to the New Ottoman Empire. Further regions, including Kurdish, could be part of a loose confederation, with the incentive of Turkish transport of Kurdish oil, and Turkish industrialization. The Sunni tribes are at least religiously compatible,  the Sunni region serving as the economically useless borderlands between the the New Ottoman Empire, and Southern Iraq.”

But Turkey has not stepped up, because:

  • It is an ethnocracy, with no desire to incorporate problematic ethnicities. Russians could learn from this.
  • Turkey’s foreign policy slogan, “Zero Problems with our Neighbors“, was designed by and for businessmen.
  • They’re too smart. Americans could learn from this.

In “What Went Wrong with the “Zero Problem with Neighbors Doctrine?”, Mustafa Kibaroğlu explains this as a consequence of Russian and Iranian presence in Syria. But as a reason, it also implies the absence of a U.S. counter. This implies a question: Is the absence of a counter partly an issue of reputation?

If you were a foreign leader, having watched American foreign policy since 2001, would you want to get in on the U.S. program? The results might cause you to think, “Those guys are a bunch of losers”. Responsibility crosses party lines. Past U.S. policy was to attempt creation of civil society from the ground up. Current U.S. foreign policy is to give away the problem. There are no takers.

But perhaps a miniature recreation of the New Ottoman Empire is at hand. The Russian intervention may force involvement that the U.S. has not been able to induce. Russia or Turkey cannot by themselves create a stable situation in Syria. But a partition of Syria into two or three smaller de facto states does have that potential. In “U.N. Security Council Syria Statement; Redeveloping the Assad Property”, with  Russia and Turkey as additions, I wrote,

“The Assad Property is due for redevelopment. The bidders are Iran, through their Hezbollah proxy, and Saudi Group. Both bidders bring unique assets to the table. Hezbollah is a strong builder but short on dough, contrasting with Saudi  Group, who have weak builders but lots of dough.”

Perhaps, in their own time and in their own way, the rump states of Syria would follow the evolution of the Old Swiss Confederacy. Sadly, there is no shortcut to the wisdom of generations.

Russia in Syria, Part IV

The foreign policy of Russia is raison d’état , with a complication. Since the internal power structure of Russia is necessarily based on “friends”, as opposed to institutional altruism, it is natural to extend this habit of thought, as the primary way to relate to other givers and receivers of power, to the international sphere. While this courtesy may be extended somewhat to every tinpot dictator, Syria is a special case. For almost half a century, Syrian men have taken Russian wives, and Russian men, Syrian wives. And as the saying goes, blood is thicker than water, and Alawites are “family”. So even if cold logic were to dictate that abandoning the Alawites to slaughter is the way to go, this fate can’t be allowed for friends. The conundrum has lead Putin’s circle to be creative in devising geopolitical reasons, raisons d’etat, to intervene in Syria.

For the intervention is dangerous. Despite the fact that Russia has some pretty good weapons systems, the Russian armed forces are, by comparison to U.S., deficient in logistics and modern battle doctrine. U.S. military interventions do not come with the question of military success, only the cost of treasure and lives. Russian adventures do come with that question. Between 1979 and 1989, in the Soviet-Afghan War, the  Soviets  attempted to keep Afghanistan as a satellite. With a little help from the C.I.A., the insurgents kicked them out. And the Russians know that if by some eventuality, ISIS were to be replaced by a legitimate opposition to Assad, the guys from The Company could show up again.

The small number of Russians now deployed with the Syrian Army can slow deterioration of the Alawite situation. A larger detachment might accomplish a temporary stalemate, though it is hard to see how the Alawite manpower problem can be reversed. This is why the Russians have made an unprecedented solicitation for western allies. It is all the more remarkable since Russia broke the Peace of Europe in Ukraine, and with rhetoric so aggressive, Germany has felt compelled to buy 100 main battle tanks, with U.S. upgrades to nuclear weapons on German soil. Russia has everybody scared to death, and now they want western help. Are they serious?

It appears they are. We can have a little schadenfreude about this. We’re not the only ones to make mistakes. First Ukraine, and now Syria. Years from now, in textbooks written by other than Putin’s “friends”, students may be introduced to the question, “Why the hell did they do this?” The answer is, they didn’t know anything about the “peace dividend.”

But Syrian intermarriage is just the lubricant of a dubious choice. To prop up a strange minority sect of Islam in a region predominantly Sunni chills relations with the Sunni bloc. The Saudis whispered, “We’re going to get you for this”, and they have, signing low cost oil contracts with China, draining Russia’s natural market. The notion that a purpose of the intervention is to preserve Russian influence in the Middle East is false, because it alienates every Arab country except the minority government of Syria, and Hezbollah.

Remarkably, the intervention has no exit strategy. But besides the saving of “friends”, there is a geopolitical motivation, which by process of elimination, compels the intervention. Besides having indefensible borders, Russia is the only country in the world that encapsulates a quasi-state of dubious loyalty and a large standing army.  Chechnya can be compared to a cancer-in-situ, with the potential to metastasize at any moment. Russian military posturing has a dual purpose. In no other country is a standing army required to anticipate not only external invasion, but also occupation by an enemy force already within the borders of the country. When Boris Nemetsov was assassinated, Putin, not sure of how this happened, but understanding that discretion is the better part of valor, relocated for about ten days to a location north of Moscow, putting Moscow between him and Chechnya. This attests to the latent threat posed by Ramzan Kadyrov and the large army of Chechnya, his personal fief.

The Russians want to project The Bear. But they know a fable called “The Three Little Pigs.” The Russian pig (sorry, Bear) lives in a straw house, with the most straw sticking out in Chechnya. The Russians were particularly offended by the failure of the Libyan Revolution to create a new state because the new locus of terrorism directly threatens their straw house in a way that obtuse or optimistic American diplomacy fails to comprehend. They have reinvented the domino theory so popular back when Indochina was a battleground. And they might be right.

But how does propping up a desperate contingent of Alawites in a sea of Sunnis save Russia’s straw house? To be continued shortly.

Russia in Syria Part III

On Russian culture, which is bound up in this whole ball of wax…

One of the many definitions of culture is that it comprises the traits and beliefs passed on from one generation to another. A most elastic term, it encompasses not just arts, sciences, law, general knowledge, and religion, but also, attitudes, which are not consciously thought, but secret to the unconscious, in uneasy meld with the primitive mind. We didn’t have to think about this too hard until the post colonial period, when cultures less advanced than western got guns and bombs.

Only very recently, perhaps only since World War II, have western cultures  institutionalized altruism in a big way. The development was preceded by representative democracy, and universal suffrage, which made politically insupportable the concept of aristocratic entitlement. Execution of a government in an even-handed way, which is similar but not identical to “without corruption”, required that the civil servant internalize altruistic principles. This was originally facilitated by allegiance to monarch, then flag, and then a sequence of documents, most notably, the U.S. Constitution (with lots and lots of administrative law), and the European Convention on Human Rights. But no form of government can function only according to the letter of the law. These documents offer guidance to the civil servant on institutional altruism: to act with concern for the individual above the institution. The degree to which an individual experiences institutional altruism may be questionable to the unfortunate who is caught in a regulatory grinder. But against the background of history, it’s remarkable nevertheless.

It is a continual puzzle  why so many world leaders, wearing elegant western business suits with correctly knotted ties, contrive governments that appear to imitate all the organs of a western democracy, but in which the processes are mere mimicry. In Russia, until the accession of Vladimir Putin, there was an attempt to create a western style democracy, but it failed. Putin’s inheritance was a very large country with an ideological vacuum. History’s dustbin contained only the Tsar and Communism. The actors of Putin’s ascension were organized crime, oligarchs, combinations of the two, and the Orthodox Church.

In order to govern the place, Putin reached for a pre-cultural concept: friends, glued together by money and self interest One cultural concept  survived, patriotism,  love for the Russian state as the embodiment of “Russian culture.” Throughout the 19th Century, as the Russian Empire incorporated nomadic societies in Central Asia, the acquisitions were described as enlightening primitives the glories of Russian culture. A culture does not have to declare itself great or superior, but that it does so is characteristic of the Russian.

Friends help friends, who in Russia must be adherents to Russian culture. This does not admit more altruistic behavior than occasional earthquake relief. With such a system, a single diplomatic principle is compatible: raison d’État , “a purely political reason for action on the part of a ruler or government, especially where a departure from openness, justice, or honesty is involved.” Cardinal Richelieu’s name has a strong association with the phrase. In the Thirty Year’s War, France, a Catholic state, backed Protestant rulers to keep France whole.

Russia’s choice today has a surprising analogy. The population of Russia is 14% Muslim. Of that 14%, only 5% are Shiite. Backing Iran separates the Sunnis of the Russian Caucasus from larger Sunni populations in the Middle East. So we have a theory, with relations with Iran as an example, that Russian foreign policy is based purely on self interest.

By contrast, U.S. foreign policy is based on both self interest and idealistic altruism, in proportions sufficient to make the electorate chronically unhappy. It has also been criticized by proxies suddenly dumped at the expiration of usefulness. Apparently, altruism does not make the U.S. a reliable buddy.

Is there other validation to this theory of Russian policy? Although Russian promotion of the Ukraine separatism has the geopolitical aspect of countering NATO expansion, the actual event appears to have been a cascade. It was started by small groups of Russian right-wing nationalists, subsequently embraced by Putin’s inner circle, and then by a popular wave, that Russians in the Ukraine must be saved from dirty Ukrainian culture, by making the land under their feet part of Russia. So Russian intervention in Ukraine bears the marks of both raison d’État and “friends.”

In this discussion, the term “friends” encompasses all forms of power and bonding in Russia. In Russia, the civil servant works for whoever pays him. In the absence of the codified altruism of a western state, personal loyalties are all there is beyond the trivial. Rather than devise a different thought system for international affairs, Russia simply extends what it has at home.

We are now prepared to analyze Russian policy in Syria, based on

  • raison d’État diplomacy
  • “friends”, bonds of loyalty,extending to international affairs
  • the costs and risks to Russia, which are considerable

The assertion that Russian foreign policy is based on self interest admits a possible exception. Among foreign entitites, can there be real friends, as opposed to friends of convenience? Apparently, yes.

To be continued shortly.

Russia in Syria Part II

With respect to Russians in Syria, important linkages figure:

  • Were it not for the existence of ISIS, the Russians would not now be in Syria.
  • ISIS is a transnational phenomenon.
  • The military power of ISIS, compared to the presence of a significant western army, is negligible. The same comparison cannot be assumed with the Russians.
  • Sociology: ISIS has no cultural overlap with any civil societies. It is a breakdown phenomena.

We may find it difficult to accustom ourselves to what resembles a fictional world of supervillains reminiscent of Dr. Evil, with a host of like-minded subalterns, grading into a murderous rabble. Yet this, the almost infinitely evil world of a “shooter” computer game, is a reasonable approximation. The Venn Diagram is a useful visualization tool. Imagine two overlapping circles, drawn on a page. You may color the circles if you wish. Slide (or draw) the two circles so that the overlap represents something common between the two. You might try “shared values” for two different cultures. Interesting comparisons, in degree of overlap, might be seen with:

  • U.S. versus E.U
  • U.S. versus Russia
  • E.U. versus North Korea
  • U.S. versus China
  • U.S. versus Saudi Arabia

Shared values could be replaced by shared interests, with differing results. Even in the case of the U.S. versus North Korea, if the ruling class of North Korea is excepted, there is tremendous overlap, illuminated by the stories of defectors. With ISIS, this is not so. To be mathematically precise, a certain segment of the captive Sunni population prefers ISIS to the status of a minority endangered by the Shiite state. Among that group, there is some small overlap with the civilized world. It is not exploitable as a germinal political force.

In this drama, the Syrians who desire western good for Syria play the part of Bambi in Bambi Meets Godzilla. Hence the direct cause of Russian intervention is ISIS, which has been lensed variously: as radical Islam, or as a religious cult. Perhaps these categories grant it too much. It may be no more than a volcanic eruption of atavism, bursting out of the human urge to kill.

Perhaps, at the end of Part III of “Russia in Syria”, you might take away what appears to be a prescription. But this pot has been boiling for over a hundred years. With that as an excuse, please forgive the apparent digression to Iraq. Your takeaway will be so colored. Iraq and Syria are national fictions, distinguished only by the territorial boundaries of the Western colonial mandates. The French carved Syria, as the British carved Iraq, from the remains of the Ottoman Empire. Suppose you are an engineer, assigned the task of making a vacuum bottle, i.e., something with good glass walls and a cork that keeps out the air. But the specification has a curious aspect: one wall is missing. The customer, who has no experience making vacuum bottles, turns out to be rigid on the spec. This is what happens when a  foreign policy of rigid moral definition is joined to a real situation. Syria an Iraq are not separate.

The military power of ISIS is negligible compared to a motivated military force with modern underpinnings. That Iraq does not have such a force has been blamed on Nouri al-Maliki, the first prime minister of Iraq. This presents an interesting challenge to the argument that the Obama Administration’s failure to, or decision not to (you make your choice)  negotiate a residual presence in Iraq is why the situation has regressed. If there had been a residual presence, Iraqi response to ISIS would have been impeded by:

  • Antipathy to U.S. presence.
  • Continued presence of Maliki, with corrupting manipulation of the military.

The replacement of Maliki removed the direct drag of his presence. Haider al-Abadi is or was the hoped-for motivational and unifying leader. But with the fall of Ramadi, it became apparent that something deep and pernicious remained. Even without Maliki, the system behaved pretty much as it had when he was running the show. In Western analysis, there is “rot”, which is to be cured by a motivational leader. With the fall of Ramadi, al-Abadi has “failed”, so there is now grumbling that he is not motivational and unifying. I remarked on this in “Ash Carter says the Iraqis Have “…’no will to fight’ in Ramadi”…Patton’s Response”

This is a theme of U.S. policy, that leaders of quality drive the genesis of nationhood. I can’t think of a successful instance. An example worthy of study, and with excellent documentation, is that of Gamal Abdel Nasser, whose successful coup was in large part the baby of Miles Copeland, arranger and trumpet player for Glenn Miller, and – incidentally – C.I.A. officer. One of his several books is “The Game of Nations”. No one could quite figure out why the C.I.A allowed publication. The only explanation that makes sense is that they could not bring themselves to come down on a plank owner.

This digression had a dual purpose. First, to emphasize that Iraq and Syria are not separate. Second, to put you in a Dr. Evil frame of mind. Analysis,  as distinct from action, is necessarily amoral. This is not so different from a kind of mathematics called the calculus of variations, where fictitious degrees of freedom are introduced, worked with, and then removed. John von Neumann’s advice to Richard Feynman was “You don’t have to be responsible for the world that you’re in.” Afterwards, you can slip back into your moral comfort zone – possibly with less comfort.

To be continued shortly.

Russia in Syria, Part I

The Russians are in Syria, and it looks like they want to hold some land. (Reuters) U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says this will only worsen the situation. The U.S. expresses alarm (CNN). Let us review the moral underpinnings of our concern. The government of Bashar al-Assad, a family based enterprise of the Alawite sect, has committed wholesale atrocities against the Sunni majority. His father, Hafez al Assad, with differing particulars, did the same thing.

The dynamics of the Assad government cannot be dissected from the extended family, or their ancestral home, Qardaha, a village in Latakia. Neither can it be separated from the curious syncretistic Alawite sect, perhaps the only in the world, excepting cults, where the religious codes are secret. The syncretistic part is the curious melding of Islamic and Christian traditions. Hafez al Assad commanded the Syrian Alawites to behave in a more Islamic fashion, and they complied. In place of a coherent set of religious beliefs,  the Alawites are glued by village culture, and the compression of the surrounding sea of Sunnis. In this case, it becomes easy to abstract the concept of a cohesive minority from the usual religious embroidery.

The early response of the Assad government to the Sunni uprising, when it was centered in Aleppo, bears remarkable similarity to that of the 1982 Hama Islamic uprising. The government of Assad’s father, Bashir-al-Assad, conducted a massacre of an estimated 20,000-40,000 residents. The suppression was successful because the social dynamic of Syria’s then stationary village society was not then receptive to conflagration. The massacre was preceded by the siege of a compact city, which could not be replicated in the context of the current, broader conflict.

The history of this conflict has featured  a lot of hand-wringing, punctuated by the new concern that Russian involvement will lengthen the war, thereby increasing civilian casualties. The Alawite army is weakening. Without some fundamental change,  ISIS victory is inevitable. Throughout, international expressions of concern have contained implicit assumptions about who has the right to live, and who is destined to die. Given that the Alawite government has committed atrocities, and that the Alawites have lives of privilege, should they suffer the fate of an ISIS victory? It should not surprise that over the extended Middle East, the degree of concern varies widely.

Since the inception of the Syria uprising, U.S. policy has evolved from complete passivity to  ineffectual support of the scarce elements who affect enmity to Assad and friendship to the U.S. In other words, the U.S. policy has been to find reasonable people and support them. Community development, in Syria and Iraq! The community is a very positive base for social change in enclaves. Unfortunately, the region is not an enclave; it is a vortex of conflict, with a constant inflow, manipulated by religions, ideology, lust for power, and, indirectly, because Syria has virtually no oil, the oil curse.

Into this witches cauldron go also the ghosts of the Great Game, the Crimean War, and the Ottoman Empire, to which all the contested territory belonged before the First World War. The ghosts threaten because

  • “Community development”, identification and support of elements that with support could prevail over religious extremism, has failed.
  • Russia is a land power, with borders that can never be made secure.
  • Sadly, Arab Spring. In a parody of Gresham’s Law, bad elements pushed out good.

Current foreign policy has been much criticized for apparent passivity on Syria, and the complete exit from Iraq. Most of the criticism has the intent of political capital.  The best of it comes from Lindsey Graham, who asks for renewed U.S. ground presence in Iraq.

Many specifics of U.S. policy to date are questionable. Yet even if early policy had been more proactive, more agile, with greater force, and greater cunning,  the desired goal could have remained elusive. Sometimes a desired goal exists in moral, but not practical terms. This is deadly to successful foreign policy. It’s not enough to feel good about what you are trying to accomplish.

In the western U.S., forest fires are not extinguished. They are contained, and allowed to burn out. But in Syria/Iraq, containment is not possible. What then?

To be continued shortly. Until then, prep yourself.

2016 Presidential Race; Why are there no heroes?

Political analysis is one of the most developed fields of prediction. This is not to say the pundits get it right; their records are hit-and-miss. But their machinery, involving grave pundits saddled to complex mathematical machinery with 3-D visualizations, captivates.

Sometimes predictive insight comes from an initial question that has no direct connection with the eventual question. Since political pundits seem to have so much trouble competing with exit polls, perhaps a question that opens up the invisible zeitgeist would be a fruitful alternative to the pundit’s complexity and specificity.  What form could the question take? For anyone with a partisan political outlook, it’s a real mind stretcher. To limber up, let’s review the brief years in which modern America was born. We segue with a general discussion of heroism in presidential elections.

In presidential races, heroes have been conspicuously absent, except for the occasional war hero, whose presidency is typically undistinguished or with signs of incompetence.  The traits of the hero are apparently incompatible with those of the successful politico, which involve active trading of one’s principles for the Greater Good of the moment. And yet if a president, in the process of being morally debauched, manages to do some good that outlasts his term, history grants him the hero’s mantle.

If this election, a candidate manages victory with a platform of complete negativity, as in “no more this…and no more that”, it will be a first.  There is always some version of “a chicken in every pot”, which Herbert Hoover actually recycled from Henry IV of France.  Jeb Bush’s version is “4% growth”(annual.) After election, as if to wash away the stains of the campaign, a president seems bound to try to create a myth that will outlast his administration. JFK’s audacity was not to promise, but to demand. His second demand was Man on the Moon. Lest it seem frivolous, the program catalyzed the rest of the technological 20th century, including the computer you are this moment using. But my favorite demand is actually his first, the exhortation of his inaugural speech, written by Ted Sorensen. Don’t make me spoil the invocation of an American Caesar. Watch his renewed demand for the service and sacrifice to the principle  of American Exceptionalism.

The United States of 1963 was a cruel place, where racial and cultural discrimination, police and civil brutality, and demands for cultural conformity were much different from today. Kennedy’s oration was directed at the enfranchised electorate.  The disenfranchised had the Civil Rights Movement. In historical judgment of a president, we must take measure of  political background of the times. Watch Martin Luther King‘s “I have a dream” , the visible pinnacle of the organized Civil Rights Movement that started gaining steam on December 1, 1955, with the arrest of Rosa Parks. Three months after MLK’s speech JFK was dead, his place in the pantheon a debatable sum of the man and the times.

For  the primacy of his role in the enlargement and extension of the Vietnam War, LBJ is one of the most reviled presidents. But his political acumen, a euphemistic reference to necessary moral debauchery, enabled passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 . Instead of a demand, LBJ offered a promise, the Great Society. With war and cruelty subtracted, these turbulent times were the birth of modern America. To our credit, we are not idle inheritors of moral capital; it has continued to evolve under our stewardship.

But in contradiction to the footsteps of giants that we see through the lens of time, JFK and LBJ had personally abhorrent traits. Ronald Kessler’s In the President’s Secret Service: Behind the Scenes with Agents in the Line of Fire and the Presidents They Protect,  is a sobering read. The depravities and personality traits of some recent presidents could not be more disturbing  if it turned out they had their own personal email servers.

The revelations about these  presidents have fueled historical revisionism.  Both seem too flawed for pivotal roles in the authoring of modern America. But stripped of saintly motivations, what happened, happened. We are left to wonder the proportions in which they lead, followed, and drifted with the currents.

The current contenders, apart from lapses of etiquette, deportment, and personal email servers, seem upstanding by comparison. Yet they share the  inability to find in today’s issues, the grounds of potential greatness. Like some sacred religious tome, the legacy of the early sixties has solidified into definition, not invocation.

The question, which claims the promise to unlock future mysteries, is: Why is this so? We could round up the usual suspects:

  • The electorate.
  • The candidates.
  • The American dream, and revisions thereof.

And so forth. To the political partisan, the candidate is the image of salvation, remaining whole till the next Burning Man Festival. You have that much time to figure out the answer. If you can turn in your homework early, you may be able to claim your place at the pundit’s round table.

 

 

 

 

 

OT: The Post Internet Fortune Teller in Chelsea, NYC

This OT excursion is only a temporary loss of focus. In search of a place to run this piece, motivated by personal experience, I thought, why not my own blog? It affords the opportunity  to compare the time-honed methods of traditional fortune tellers with the methods of those who currently pursue future knowledge. The techniques of divination may overlap.

The Post-Internet Fortune Teller in Chelsea

Ofri Cnaani, post-internet artist and instructor at the School of Visual Arts, SVA,  has a show at Andrea Meislin Gallery, 534 W 24th St., Chelsea, running through October 24. Ofri has used the cyanotype process, known to us as “blueprint”, to create spaces that, if not dreamscapes, inhabit the same places as dreams. Several other composite works turn computer frustration into art. I am somewhat disappointed with the omission of the infamous Microsoft “Blue Screen of Death.” This computer equivalent of cyanide would have been well served by cyanotype. On the other hand, anyone who has actually experienced the Blue Screen of Death might prefer to forget it. Ofri is a Mac user.

If you would relish the chance to stare directly into Ofri’s eyes, go to the show. It’s part of the “process”, a performance event called, “Wrong Tools”, in which Ofri plays the post internet transmogrification of the Gypsy fortune teller. Gone are the beads and curtains, replaced by discarded computer chachkis. The tarot deck is replaced by one depicting and betraying those who have fallen to the cruel logic of the Internet. One personal possession and two chosen by the participant from bins of cast-offs are melded by Ofri into your personal reading and personal work of art. But two traditions remain: the card flip, and locking eyes with the Internet Spirit, channeled, in this case, by Ofri.

My card was flipped. I wailed in sorrow as it betrayed my fate: “Your posts are being used against you.” Ofri interrupted my lament, commanding me to stare directly into her eyes, “for the process.” Our not-quite-blazing eyes locked for the prescribed interval, during which I was completely unconscious of what happened, if anything. A whir of a photocopier, and my personal work of art was handed to me, sharply downscaled in beauty from the cyanotypes, but a keeper nonetheless.

“Wrong Tools” was a reminder of my own gypsy adventures. I wrote a script about gypsies. It actually got optioned, though nothing came of it. I was diligent. I joined the Gypsy Lore Society. I read such sociological literature as exists from the intense curiosity of sociologists of this apparently insoluble underclass. And with the insane synchronicity in my life, I had a Gypsy quasi-girlfriend (she wanted to hook me, but I didn’t want to be hooked.) Her mom was actually super nice. She had been Jimi Hendrix’s last girlfriend, inspiration for his song, “Gypsy Eyes.”

 The Gypsies (more correctly, “Rom”) of her class were nothing like the stereotypical gypsies, who also exist. In Atlantic City, scouting locations for the film, I landed directly on top, parking-wise, of the last remaining ofisa on the Atlantic City Boardwalk. The ofisa had traditional elegance, reprising the temporary, transportable opulence of a nomad’s lifestyle. The human adornment was an obviously very intelligent and not unattractive young woman and her grandmother. The young woman had all the material to be a lawyer, but was condemned to be married off. How was this to be accomplished? By family arrangement, or by way of her performance art? The question lingers.

In manner and appearance, there was an Sephardic resemblance. Nothing else distinguished her, except for obvious intelligence, and the weight of her gown, which caused her to sweat. By watching the rate of bead formation on her forehead, I had an instantaneous readout of her stress level. Never before, perhaps, was she studied as closely as I was to study her, as, simultaneously, she tried to divine me. Sweat, as every interrogator knows, is gold.

 I was accompanied by the cinematographer. To get the most out of it, I forked over the twenty bucks for a reading. I was  conducted to a tiny back booth, where she tried to script ninety seconds that would not compromise her reputation, so dearly supported by her gown, the rugs, the beads, the spiritual figures and figurines, and several hundred pounds of chachkis.

 She actually did pretty well. I think she might have “divined” three things, two of which I remember:

  • Money comes to me easily and leaves me easily. Sure. I had just dropped a twenty on her. Easy come, easy go.
  • I have woman troubles. A man comes in with another man. Where is the woman? Play the averages. Ergo, the man has woman troubles.

The ninety seconds exhausted her. Swaddled in the fabric yards of tradition, her glow was replaced by sweat. I cannot imagine how she survived the rest of the day without a change of clothes, into something more appropriate, like a bathing suit.

Perhaps I forget the other things she told me because they were a potpourri of things that are true and false for everybody. For another twenty bucks, I could have had another ninety seconds of her script. But alas for her divination of my traits, easy come easy go has limits. I have my regrets also, but it wasn’t about the twenty bucks. I would have liked to know her better, but I shied from the risk and the pain.

Are Ofri’s “Wrong Tools” the wrong tools for the job? Conduct yourself to Andrea Meislin, compare to my Gypsy experience, and then decide.

 

Yemen, Aden, & Scissors/Paper/Rock

Some retrospection is useful. In Buying Yemen, I offered that one of the several motivations for the current Saudi use of the oil weapon is to keep Iran too poor to compete in the bidding for tribal loyalties. In Saudi, Houthis, Yemen & Pirates of Penzance, noting a lack of success in the buying, I wrote, “The  unlimited money of the House of Saud, and evident inability to use it to cause the Sunni tribes to coalesce, is itself a debacle.”

Although Saudi airstrikes are the visible part of Saudi support, the checkbook is again vindicated.  Regaining of Aden by Saudi-friendly forces, which means those friendly to Yemen president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, indicates that Saudi money has bought some success. But checkbook power is not unlimited. If it were, the Saudis would have bought off the Houthis, and there would presently be no  war. It’s  like scissors-paper-rock. Religion is the scissors; money is paper, and rocks are bullets.

Money works where a fault line can be exploited, and fault lines are what enabled the conflict to grow right through the hard religious boundary of Sunni/Shiite antagonism.  In November, 2011, following the “Arab Spring” event in Yemen, the  former president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, ceded power to Hadi. Hadi seemed well on the way to unifying the country, when the Houthis seized on the practical problems of extreme poverty with a demand of universal appeal, restoration of the fuel subsidy. This activated a fault line among the Sunni tribes, among whom  Saleh commands a considerable loyalty, and, at the time, the largest militia. In politics, the slogan  “cheap gas”  works almost anywhere.

In Buying Yemen, I speculated that the Saudis might buy Saleh himself. The result would have been widespread collapse of the rebellion, and the likely retreat of Houthis back into their native territory.  But Saleh could not be bought.   Plausibly, Houthi promises of political power were more important to Saleh, though he did not broadcast his allegiance until the Saudis bombed his house. In May ’14, Hadi’s National Dialogue Conference claimed transformational progress, with one of the goals disarmament of the militias. This would have been fatal to Saleh’s conception of existence, of tribesmen with guns, bound by personal loyalty to him. A business suit does not a Western outlook make.

Although alliances shift like blowing sand dunes, it was a surprise to find Saleh on the Houthi side, because under his presidency, the Houthi movement’s attempt to fracture Yemen resulted in repression of the movement. The founder, Hussein al-Houthi, was killed by Saleh’s forces in September, 2004.

With a little education on the issues, a little persuasion from overhead, and a little grease on the palm, a Sunni soldier in Saleh’s militia might become skeptical of  promises of prosperity in a new Yemen shared by Houthis with a blood grudge.  A few defections were first reported in May, but lacked the implication of a fundamental shift. The taking of Aden provides that implication.

The Aden supply line runs through the port of Aden, so it cannot be interdicted by the Houthis.  The risk at sea is small, subject only to hypothetical piracy or Iranian pot shots. The compactness of Aden and the security of the rear facilitates force concentration.  This asymmetry favors the Saudi backed forces in the vicinity of Aden.  But as the Saudi backed forces attempt to extend their pocket, with the eventual objective of Sana’a , the asymmetries turn against them.  Aden is on a coastal plane. Beyond the plain,  rugged terrain favors the defender and the harasser.

But the capture of Aden lowers the buy-price for desertion of Saleh’s men.  Since Aden is the principle port,  the Saudis can now offer, in addition to the abstraction called money, the lure of tangibles, such as gas, food, bottled water, and little luxuries as well. Perhaps they can buy enough loyalties to disintegrate Saleh’s tribal patchwork.

Life in Yemen is indescribably hard. Every man has his price. What’s yours?