ISIS Attacks Russian Base T4; the Kremlin’s Missing Musical Notes

CNN: Did ISIS attack Russian military equipment at key Syrian base?

This is asserted by STRATFOR, a reliable organization. The analysis is good. The open-source conclusion is that, Russian assertions to the contrary, the strike occurred.

The success of ISIS in damaging Base T4, at which advanced weapons were stationed, doubtless evokes the shudders of the Soviet-Afghan War. After ten years of Soviet presence approximating 100,000 soldiers, Soviet losses forced a withdrawal in February 1989.

In New Cold War, Not!, I wrote

All labels carry baggage. The Cold War label carries this: We are in conflict with a powerful, implacable enemy. But it’s not true. The canary is Syria, and the cat is going to have serious indigestion.

Since I wrote that, I have been wondering whether some of the readers of this blog would be interested in a more explicit warning as to how bad it could get. Has the Kremlin considered the consequences if one of the regional enemies they have recently made decided to supply the insurgents with MANPADs?  Three things drove the Soviets out of Afghanistan: the indigenous mujahideen, the CIA, and Stinger MANPADs.

Some of the irritation Russia has supplied to the West has been trivial, such as barrel roll intercepts of reconnaissance aircraft. Some of it has scared the West enough to spend good money, as with the five new NATO “tripwire” brigades. Some of it is just a pain in  the ass,  little pinpricks intended to erode, by infinitesimal degrees, American “hegemony.”

But with all that, the U.S. is too sane to give MANPADs to the Syrian opposition. Other regional powers, to whom the Russian presence is a more existential threat, could break the unspoken compact. ROKETSTAN, a Turkish company, manufactures Stingers under license. But even without the MANPAD complication, the Russians are now to have the experience of indigestion.

This is because the effectiveness of the opposition, whatever the composition, is not simply a matter of arms, or even politics. On a very basic level, it is the nature of an indigenous resistance to adapt, and therefore, become more efficient. One of these steps has formal recognition in the literature, the emergence of an insurgency, as happened after the American conquest of Iraq.  But as the Syrian insurgency has existed from the start, it is important to recognize other steps. Even as the military order of battle of an insurgency deteriorates, it can become more efficient through a process of evolution. As the Russians know well from their Chechen experience, the only cure for it is scorched-earth warfare with massive commitment of forces.

The Russians recently proposed, again, that Russia and the U.S. commit to joint airstrikes against ISIS. This was personally surprising. Henry Kissinger has explained that Vladimir Putin, at some point, was a client. Kissinger explains that Putin is not a friend, but that “they want to know how things work.” If some things were left unexplained,  Kissinger’s “White House Years” explains everything. It’s a big-hearted look at diplomacy that explains why this is not in the cards.

Thus far, Russian diplomacy resembles the musical pentonic scale, missing some notes to which the Western ear is accustomed. Adeptness with surgical saber thrusts is the base note. Ascending the scale,  It blusters, it threatens, and it occasionally makes nice. The “Year of Friendship” with North Korea was a nice gesture. The fifth note of the scale might be the Russian emphasis on the reliability of their friendship, as was granted to Hafez Assad in the Soviet era, apparently without restrictions on subsequent behavior.

American policy is not exempt from criticism. Failing to recognize that hope is inadequate justification for  foreign policy, it lacks a prospect for the Russians to grasp. And with their musical limitations, the Russians are apparently unable to synthesize it themselves.

The five notes of Russian foreign policy are not enough. The Kremlin must find those missing notes, stat.

EgyptAir Flight 804

There is a marked difference in the official responses to the loss of EgyptAir Flight 804, and the Sinai Metrojet disaster six months prior, discussed in this post.

A half year ago, on October 31, 2015, Russia’s  Metrojet Flight 9268 disintegrated above Sinai. Hull losses of this airplane have been extremely rare, and the weather was fine. The laxity of ground controls at Sharm-el Sheikh Airport had already been noted by some, with a “buy your way through security” policy. The  permeation of Egyptian society by radical elements is significant, though not overwhelming. So  rude statistical thinking advocated immediate adoption of a terrorism-based theory.

But even though ISIL claimed responsibility almost immediately, Egyptian and Russian pronouncements exhibited negative bias toward the hypothesis of terrorism. For both Egypt and Russia, a solution of the question in that form would have negative economic, political, and social consequences. Egypt’s Prime Minister seems more accepting of the idea for Flight 804, though still with traces of political reluctance. Quoting Reuters,

Egyptian Prime Minister Sherif Ismail said it was too early to rule out any explanation for the crash, including an attack like the one blamed for bringing down a Russian airliner over Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula last year.

The physical evidence in the current case is scanty. U.S. satellite imagery shows no evidence of explosion. This means only absence of

  • An infrared signature indicative of  fire.
  • Separation of a major structural component, such as an entire wing.

It does not rule out damage of the control systems by a small bomb. Cockpit invasion or pilot suicide are also possible, suggested by the swerving motions preceding complete loss of control.

Comparison of official reactions to the two disasters is noteworthy. Rude statistical thinking is a powerful tool in the evaluation of the extraordinary, but it is frequently  obstructed by custom or bias. Sometimes the obstruction is legal caution, which is proper. Sometimes it is political, which is not.

This is  an instance of a general human flaw, the belief-preference for the demonstrated threat over the highly plausible yet hypothetical one.

 

 

Let’s talk!

If you find the material in this blog useful, let’s talk. I am open to:

  • The U.S. intelligence community and executive branch.
  • The Five Eyes.
  • Western academic institutions.
  • Members of Congress.
  • Candidates for national office.
  • The press.

You may merely wish to have the posts authenticated. Perhaps you’d like some expansion on the topics. Perhaps you have a particular interest. Let’s explore. Email to contact@intel9.us. Discussions of substance require an authenticated channel other than email.

Mikhail Lesin Takeaway

The  popularity of the two part post, Mikhail Lesin, a Kremlin Hit, has been a pleasant surprise. I would have been even happier had such enthusiasm been directed towards the five part series, Address to Davos, with  weightier concerns than whether a dubious personage got knocked on the head with an ingenious gadget in D.C.   Mikhail Lesin founded RT, for which reason my tears might be of the crocodile variety.

If you’re looking for the gadget, it is not likely to be found. Although high-tech wizbang cannot be ruled out, it might be rather simple, assembled out of common objects, and completely unrecognizable until assembled. It may consist of operator technique as much as device.

The historical root of Soviet assassination as a state tool was the Comintern, which established it as a prerogative of Soviet foreign policy, unconstrained by national boundaries. The Soviet officer in charge, Pavel Sudoplatov,  of whose autobiography Special Tasks (co authored with his son Anatoli)  I am honored to have an autographed copy, was by all accounts someone you might have wished to have as a friend, who describes himself as badly mislead into thinking that his patriotic acts were also morally correct. Sudoplatov was badly tainted by his use of the products of a lab known variously as “Laboratory 12…,13, 1”, (the numbers kept changing), the Poison laboratory of the Soviet secret services, whose products were tested for efficacy on human subjects.

All this has been long abolished. But what was formerly institutional policy lingers like a bad habit. The peculiar situation by which the Russian elite park their wealth abroad has created a vast pool of sophisticates who could reach for the quasi-official and perhaps all the way to the official when a knife in the ribs is desired. Of all the unknowns that define the “Elite”,or  the “Inner Circle”, the nature and extent of this relationship is one of the most pressing. The possible involvement of Russian political leadership, the actual “nomenklatura“, is another.

Assassination is a bad habit. As with other acts of violence, it inspires imitation. Sudoplatov was convicted of crimes, none of which exceeded his actions under direct orders, and served fifteen years in prison. The Soviets themselves were so afraid of him, early release was not contemplated. By Sudoplatov’s account, his latter interrogator was astonished when told that every assassination had been meticulously documented, and was part of the record. It is likely that even members of the Russian government are scared this could get out of hand. You cannot build a civilized nation on extrajudicial slayings. The ghosts move the hands of the living to perpetuate the horror.

Soviet adeptness with domestic propaganda lead to their belief that the image constructed by Western minds of Russia can be managed. With post Soviet Russia these manipulations have had  modest success, sometimes causing Western reaction in the desired direction, and sometimes in the reverse. If the “Inner Circle” thinks assassination has a tolerable cost, it is a consequence of the successes.

Russian overconfidence in the management of Western perceptions entails the risk of dangerous  miscalculation. It is the best justification of the resources  consumed by investigations of possible assassinations. Since Russia remains a partly open society, their understanding that we understand them may be profoundly beneficial to how they understand themselves.

 

 

 

Mikhail Lesin Hit Part 2 – the Motive & Grading the Theory

Let us pretend that we have established that Lesin was assassinated, but have no idea who did it. We would do what all detectives did before DNA testing: look for motive.

Lesin was a former advisor to Putin. Almost by definition, he possessed knowledge exceedingly dangerous to individuals in the Kremlin. The Daily Mail claims a Panama leak connection: “Murdered over money? Panama leaks reveal that Putin’s former media chief who died in a Washington hotel room was linked to offshore company ‘used by the Russian leader'”.

Quoting another Daily Mail article “Yet some 16 months earlier, Senator Roger Wicker had called for a Justice Department probe into whether Lesin was engaged in money laundering.” Quoting further,

Former Russian vice premier Alfred Kokh openly asked this week whether Lesin could have been murdered – like a new Alexander Litvinenko, a Putin foe poisoned by radioactive polonium poured into his tea in London nine years ago.

Kokh spoke amid fears in Moscow that he was ready to trade his inside knowledge of the Putin court for an end to any American investigation into the propriety of his wealth.

Was Lesin of such character that he could have provided assurances to the Kremlin that he would not turn coat?

  • He was a heavy drinker.
  • He was prone to antisocial outbursts.
  • He was in Washington, which according to Kokh is a very boring town. Quoting The Daily Mail, “Questioning why Putin’s former media manipulator was in the US capital, Kokh asked in an online posting: ‘What’s so interesting about Washington? I’ve been there quite a few times. ‘And I’d answer – nothing. At all. It’s a boring city without a touch of spice.'”

Since the Russians possess more sophisticated means of assassination, such as nominally undetectable poisons, why was Lesin  beaten? And it has been asked, if Lesin was murdered, why in Washington and not in Russia, where he had recently been? Lesin had been exporting his wealth, removing an important lever of behavioral control. A compatible answer is that it was intended to be a visceral warning to all expatriates: Russia can reach you.

It may have been technologically sophisticated. Since the full knowledge of the coroner is not available in open source, only speculative examples can be given.  Lesin’s encounter with an assassin could have been not inside his room, but elsewhere. A subdural hematoma, caused  by a hypothetical  gadget, could produce an immediate feeling of only mild illness, allowing Lesin to retreat to his room. But such hematomas, untreated, tend to cause death within hours.

The theory incorporates a number of reasoning techniques, which sum to what is called a suspicion. Productive use of this combination of techniques has not been formalized, and it should be. The ability of the individual to execute a theory of this type varies widely. Dysrationalia is common. But it seems that the construction of  a theory of suspicion has these characteristics:

  • Postulates  of low quality, so that individually, they have a high probability of being false.
  • High internal consistency.
  • A  structure that results in a theory with a higher level of confidence than isolated consideration of the individual postulates. It occurs when consistency implies dependency.  Part of this is analogous to Feynman diagrams of physics: The chance of arriving at a state is the sum of all the ways of getting there.
  • Global clauses that, while not linked in any specific way, bias the probabilities. Example:  “They’ve done this sort of thing before.”

If I were not a game player, and were asked to assign a probability to the truth of the theory, I might say slightly better than chance. But I have been a game player, in the IARPA program/competition FWE (Forcasting World Events), in 2013-2014. The game was so constructed that to improve one’s score, one had to assign a probability, either positive or negative, higher than one’s cumulative average. Mine was 80.535, with a rank of #9/4460. To use this question to improve my score, I would have to assign high certainty to my prediction.

In the IARPA/FWE frame of mind, how would I grade the theory that this hit came from the Kremlin? Better than 90%. Perhaps you would then ask, what is my estimate that Vladimir Putin approved the killing? Solely to maintain my score, I would exercise the other FWE option, to decline the question.

The dynamics of the Kremlin are far more complex than one might suppose. There is a popular desire to use events such as these for political purposes. The event of Lesin’s death/murder is vulnerable to this, because so little is known, at least in open sources, about the inner workings of the Kremlin. Only preciously obtained human intelligence can reveal it. What is revealed is guarded with the strictest secrecy, or the sources would not last long.

Putin’s rule is a mixture of persuasion, compulsion, and consent of the ruled. Every mold of rule has different implications. If we decide he is a tribal chieftain, then he is surrounded by a circle of confidants and confidence. If it should break down, the chieftain is deposed. The chieftain is obliged to protect. If someone demands protection, what does he do?

So the question posed as, “Did Putin order the killing of Lesin?” is the wrong question. The correct question is to understand the entire process of decision, of who was pressured, who was threatened, who encouraged, and who acquiesced. And although it has never been feasible to stop assassinations on American soil, we want to understand the execution.

We want to understand these things because knowledge is power, not mere political capital.

Mikhail Lesin, a Kremlin Hit, a Theory, Part 1

Mikhail Lesin, former Kremlin advisor, was found dead in a Washington hotel room in November. The determinations of the Washington medical examiner were a long time coming. Quoting NBC News,

Autopsy results show that he died from “blunt-force injuries of the head,” according to a joint statement Thursday from the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department and Office of the Chief Medical Examiner reported by NBC Washington, but the exact manner of death was undetermined. Also contributing to his death were “blunt-force injuries of the neck, torso, upper extremities and lower extremities,” the statement said.

In street lingo, this says he was beaten to death. But quoting the Washington Post, “Dustin Sternbeck, the D.C. police department’s chief spokesman, said the case remains under investigation. He would not say whether the medical examiner’s ruling means a crime may have been committed.”

If Mikhail Lesin were a sufficiently interesting person, if he were more a good guy than he was, his somewhat mysterious death would spawn a frenzy of conspiracy theories. The error of the conspiracist is to assume that anything that possibly happened, happened. But the event is interesting enough to spawn a theory. So that I don’t have to put a qualifier in each sentence, please assume that in what follows, it is already there. What follows is not a deduction of facts, but a theory with the virtues of two kinds of consistency: with the facts, and of internal logic.

So  let us proceed. The language and conclusions are unusually cautious. The street interpretation of the coroner’s report is that Lesin was beaten to death.  Let us not hasten to conclude that the coroner’s office held back for political reasons. Forensics is an exceedingly developed science.  The corpse has doubtless been examined in almost microscopic detail, characterizing tissue injuries and post-death flows of blood. The picture of foul play is challenged by the absence of signs of forced entry. So to conclude that Lesin was beaten to death, that process, with all the physical postures Lesin assumed, as well as those of the hypothetical attacker, would need to be rigorously reconstructed.

If the reconstruction doesn’t cohere,  all that’s left are the the bruises, but not the order in which they occurred, or what Lesin and the possible assailant were doing. We could conclude that Lesin danced around his hotel room, banging into things until he was dead. This, of course, is ridiculous.

Because it is ridiculous, the coroner’s indecision has meaning. Choices:

  • There is genuine confusion in the coroner’s office. Non supportive to the theory. 
  • There is  enough to conclude that Lesin was beaten to death, but not enough to reconstruct the crime. Non supportive to the theory. 
  •  The scene has been reconstructed, but deliberately not disclosed. An interesting reason exists. Suppose it was a Kremlin job.  Regardless of whether the job was executed by a Russian state employee, or a freelancer, the Russians would want a report card. A coroner’s reconstruction of the crime serves as that report card, enabling the perpetrators to refine their techniques. Supportive to the theory. 

If you’re frustrated with the coroner’s report, so are the Russians. Quoting NBC,

The Russian embassy in the United States has repeatedly requested through diplomatic channels concerning the investigation into the death of a Russian citizen,” spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said…The American side did not provide us with any substantial information. We’re awaiting explanations and official information from Washington concerning the progress of the investigation.

And this is congruent with suspicion of the Russians.

The KGB had great expertise in the art of undetectable murder. Their talents have not been lost. The same goes for undetectable entry into the hotel room. In spy parlance, this is called a “black bag job.” We are almost done with the meager evidence of an actual crime. But there is one more thing.  Quoting the NY Times, “And then, in November, he was found in a hotel here in Washington, the victim, the Russian state media he had helped build said, of a heart attack.” No domestic U.S. report, from EMT responders, cops, or the coroner’s office offers it as a cause. So why did Russian media report this? There are two possibilities:

Next: Motive, and Grading the Theory.

 

 

Replacing Assad, Part 3

In White House Years, Henry Kissinger writes, “If history teaches us anything, it is that there can be no peace without equilibrium and no justice without restraint.” The second clause was abided by the surrender terms offered by Ulyesses S. Grant to Robert E. Lee at Appomatox, when the surrendered were permitted to keep their horses: and their liberty:

“…The officers to give their individual paroles not to take up arms against the Government of the United States until properly exchanged, and each company or regimental commander sign a like parole for the men of their commands. The arms, artillery and public property to be parked and stacked, and turned over to the officer appointed by me to receive them. This will not embrace the side-arms of the officers, nor their private horses or baggage. This done, each officer and man will be allowed to return to their homes, not to be disturbed by United States authority so long as they observe their paroles and the laws in force where they may reside.”

No positive reference of the second clause, justice without restraint, is possible in connection with Syria. For although the Confederacy was fighting for an ignoble cause, the times allowed this civility. Total war had disappeared sometime after the expulsion of the Moors from Europe, to be replaced by the incredibly polite Cabinet Wars, The first reappearance of total war may have been the Paris Commune.

The West has evolved to a state that cannot countenance total war, but intervenes in the Middle East, where most of the belligerents do. Decades of control-by-massacre make the reconstitution of Syria, in which the minority Alawites have held power for 47 years, impossible. So we are left in search of the first clause, equilibrium.

The physical sciences and social phenomena have been borrowing words from each other for a long  time. In science, “stable” means a physical situation that doesn’t change for a long time. The etymological root is the place where a horse is kept, where it can’t run away. The desire inspired Plato’s Republic, a method to freeze a society in an optimal state.

Equilibrium is also such a term. It refers to a system where changes occur, with other changes occurring at just the right rate to undo them. For example, water evaporates from lakes, rivers, and oceans, and glaciers melt, but it should rain or snow at just the rate so that they are exactly replenished. To the extent that this is not true, Earth risks ruin from climate change. The EU and the U.S. are social analogs, attempts to preserve structure in the long term by allowing and encouraging change in the short term.

So stability and equilibrium are different. Stability is sought by diplomats and dictators, because it is simple to describe. If achieved, a hypothetical occurrence, nothing changes. Equilibrium is much more complicated, occurring spontaneously, each instance perhaps sui generis. But with the collapse of the colonial era, the Third World came into being mostly as inherently unstable states. Chemical explosives are the physical analogy. An explosive contains both the substance that burns, and the oxidizer that burns it, in intimate combination. In an artificially constituted polity of elements that hate each other, all it takes is the “spark”, for social conflagration, expressions borrowed from physics and chemistry. Arab Spring provides some recent examples.

The Middle East is now dotted with states created by diplomats out of the remains of the Ottoman Empire. All of them have failed, except for Jordan which has squeaked by, and Egypt, which benefits from a prior existence. Saudi Arabia is an indigenous creation, although it incorporates the former Ottoman possession of Hejaz. Iran, never an Ottoman possession, has been an indigenous creation for almost a millennium. To jump centuries of social evolution and solve the Syria conundrum, it is popular to promote “elections”, which, if held, would be interpreted by the winner to mean, “winner takes all.” Elections are the novel feature of equilibrium states.

So we need a new form of stability or equilibrium, whichever is possible, something not tried before by diplomacy. Perhaps we should allow the same thought that struck Kissinger. On page 54 of White House Years, he wrote, “I had written a book and several articles on the diplomacy of the 19th century. My motive was to understand the processes by which Europe after the Napoleonic wars established a peace that lasted a century;…”. He goes on to write that he never thought such knowledge could be literally useful in the present. And in fact, balance of power has not been part of the modern diplomat’s toolbox of statecraft. Simpler means with utopian gloss are more popular. On page 55, Kissinger writes, “He [my note: the statesman] rarely can reach his goal except in stages; any partial step is inherently morally imperfect and yet morality cannot be approximated without it.”

Assad’s Sunni opponents, whose lineage traces back to the Baathist secularism of the 60’s, various recondite quasi-western ideas, and various degrees of Islam, have been in conflict since the monarchy was deposed in 1958. If Assad’s Alawites had never seized power, there is a more than decent chance that conflict of similar intensity would now exist, with different names and different actors. The current trajectory may lead to something similar, with peripheral regions ruled by warlords, permeable to the same radical influences that gave birth to ISIL.

There is an urgent need to unify the opposition. A unified opposition has the potential of evolution towards a pluralistic society. Paradoxically, nothing works for this as well as a good enemy. External enemies have been the grist of every nation-building event, and remain a popular political staple. A reduced Alawite Syria, encompassing Latakia and perhaps Damascus, fits the role.

This is a balance-of-power solution to the statecraft problem. In isolation, it has an immoral sense about it. But in implementation, it would be just a piece of a solution. It corresponds to a geographic partition constrained by economic and defensive viability. There might be little to distinguish from more conventional solutions that partition, except for one thing. Each of the new states must be a client to one of the traditional patrons, the U.S. and Russia. And contrary to the former middle east rivalry, those patrons must work for the mutual benefit of the clients, rather than use them as proxies for their own conflict.

A major part of the problem, Assad now becomes a major part of the solution. Questions to mull are:

  • Does a balance-of-power solution to the Syria crisis offer a way to reduce the combustibility of the region?
  • Does it support the goal of having every square inch occupied by states that would exclude non-state actors, ie., terrorism?
  • Can it be implemented in the face of the condemnation that would heap on such a complex and apparently ambiguous strategy?
  • Does it offer the possibility of pacific evolution?
  • Is it sufficiently moral?
  • Would the Russians buy in to an Alawite Syria comprised of somewhat less than the Alawites have tenuously gained, but cannot hold without Russian airpower?

Think about this. I will too.

Replacing Assad, Part 2

The promised question, “Could Assad be useful in a solution?”, will follow this necessary preliminary.

Imagine that you are a bank robber on the run. But the law has closed in. You’re in a shack surrounded by cops, who have shouted, “Come out with your hands up!”  But you don’t, even though you’re outnumbered, outgunned, and without a friend in the world. By trying to live for a few more moments on your own terms, you commit suicide by cop.

Too extreme? How about a paternity suit, in which DNA would declare you the responsible loser, yet you refuse to settle out of court. Still too much? How about a petty argument that could end with your admission? All of these examples involve ceding an element of control. In the case of the robber, it’s control of the few square yards you occupy, and with it, the illusion of personal freedom. With the paternity suit, it’s control over money. With the argument, it’s control over a true/false variable. Given the frequency of arguments that last forever, control over the declaration of a fact has value.

The above are common occurrences of human behavior,  replicated on all scales of intensity and  numbers. The common element is refusal to cede control of an item that may be anything from land to a mere abstraction. Entire societies can participate.  There is a remarkable similarity between the behavior of nations and infants. Only in the West have nations matured to adult social responsibility.

In United States to press Russia on Syria’s Assad, the argument is made that the real question is  not whether Assad should remain president, but  whether the president should be an Alawite or Sunni, which is equivalent to, “Should the Alawites give up control?”

The position of the Alawites is similar to that of the bank robber. The ruling Alawite political class is collectively responsible for genocide against the Sunni majority. With 250,000 deaths in the current conflict, mass murder on a smaller scale has a continuity back to the regime of Assad’s father, Hafez, as with the 1982 Hama massacre, this handy massacre list, and any time a possibly subversive Sunni landed in the clutches of the Alawite Mukhabarat.

It takes a peculiar kind of thinking to excuse any of this with the thought that in this region, the maxim “Do unto others before they do unto you” has real  survival value. Perhaps  if the Alawites had never ventured out of their homeland of Latakia to claim a whole nation with different demographics, all this could be avoided. But most readers would not consciously author a Syria settlement that reverses the  arrow of genocide.

Analogous to the plight of the robber, the Alawites are surrounded by a demographic sea of Sunnis. Only the disorganization of the Syrian Sunnis, favored by the lack of hierarchy of Sunni Islam, permits the projections of Russia and Iran to achieve significance. The Alawite preoccupation with control is analogous to the robber’s fears of capture.  If the robber surrenders, he faces a prison sentence. The Alawites face dispossession, degradation, and death.

The Alawites know that the international response to genocide has always been weak. Before World War II, there was nothing to speak of.  The U.N. has been ineffective. Genocides that could have been halted by modest yet timely military interventions include Rwanda and Bosnia. The current example is Syria itself. Control in the present, the essential barrier against genocide in the future, is equivalent in the Alawite mind to continuance of Assad’s regime.

Some points start out as nonnegotiable, but become negotiable. Others lack the possibility. Suppose the Alawite mind were like a see-saw,  in which two alternatives balanced exactly in desirability:

  • Russian force protection
  • International guarantees in return for relinquishment of control.

If it were possible to balance this mental see-saw,  the Alawite presidency would become negotiable. In balance, the two items become equivalent, and therefore exchangeable.  If the Russians were willing, they could try to use their military to achieve detailed balance. But unlike physical problems of weights and measures, equivalency is rarely possible. It is a nonlinear problem. There is no point of balance. To wit:

A child insults a parent, and tries to avoid a spanking. They run around the house. The child is caught, and the spanking administered. The child is released, and then…? The child insults the parent again, the chase repeats…ad infinitum. Eventually, both tire. Perhaps upon reflection, the child learns something.

But learning, and evolution of the behavior of the individual or society, is not the equivalent of a point of balance. The strategy of micro-managing military intervention  to balance the see-saw, motivating the Alawites to cede power, would likely result in the robber’s miscalculation, suicide by military means. The Alawites would not be sufficiently self-aware of their imminent collapse to exercise the political option before collapse became fait accompli.

So in the context of a unified Syria, the removal of Bashar-al-Assad is in the category of the nonnegotiable. It cannot be transformed to the negotiable. It can be externally imposed, or it could simply happen. For example, it could happen if for reasons of future internal instability, Russia is unable to continue their intervention.

“Could Assad be useful in a solution?”  will be covered in the next post.

 

 

 

United States to press Russia on Syria’s Assad

Reuters. United States to press Russia on Syria’s Assad, as in, “Can we please get rid of him?”

This blog tries to preserve the distinction between modes of action, such as diplomacy and military interventions, and intelligence, which, in the purest form, is understanding things as they are. Since no one at one of these poles is immune to the pull of the other, it helps to recuse one’s self from the other pole. In lieu of that, you have to make a conscious effort to separate the two. This post, and more so the next, will tread the verge. Complicating this, the two poles are connected by something that might be called understanding the situation as a whole. The 60’s word, grock, is a perfect fit.

The two negotiators, Kerry and Putin, carry mental frameworks shaped by different academics and different environments. Kerry is a lawyer who studied and practiced law in a country where the law is not dependent upon any particular individual. In the U.S., the law is a living thing, but its growth is framed by strong institutions that moderate and contain the biases of individuals and the age. Since in western countries, it is widely held that law was the greatest invention of man, it is natural for Kerry’s mental framework to put it in the forefront of the problem. The solution to this interpretation of the Syria problem calls for creation of a government with western style institutions. If the institutions are strong enough, or become so by appropriate nurturing, then, the theory goes, the problem is solved.

This worked in India. The emergence of democracy has been largely spontaneous and unpredictable.  India, and a few smaller remnants of British colonialism, may be the only successful impositions.

The background of Vladimir Putin is different. Putin’s U.S.S.R., and now, Russia, has never been a state of impersonal law. The Russia of today is seriously threatened, both from within and without. Putin has never explained why he dismantled Russia’s democracy. Perhaps he feared it could not withstand future cataclysms. Admittedly, it didn’t work very well. But it could have been braced and splinted, rather than replaced by the fake of that perfect Russian phrase, “Potemkin village.”

But this is what he did, and the reasons are probably more correct than the solutions applied. All of the nondemocratic regimes fear disorder. Putin’s claim that U.S. foreign policy has resulted in the destruction of functioning, if despotic states, with no apparent benefit to the inhabitants, is not without merit. So it’s legitimate to ask if the western recipe for Syria, if it actually existed, would result in more of the same.

Kerry and Putin embed Syria in different “thought containers”, a term coined to mean an individual’s personal “box.” A popular phrase for creative thinking is “thinking outside the box.” But the attempt usually results in merely touching the walls. Their communications are hampered by differing domains of discourse. Sharing a limited set of formal definitions, every implied meaning is different.

So it is no surprise that continuance of Bashar al-Assad as president of Syria is a point of contention. Assad is a very evil man. Beneath the surface of evil, many distinctions exist. He could be the author, executor, pliant tool of his clan, or Faustian bargainer. Regardless, drag him to the Hague court, and his guilt is certain. But the question has been curiously misstated.

The real question is not whether Assad should remain president. It is whether the president should be an Alawite or Sunni. The history of Alawite Syria has been characterized by almost complete opacity of the ruling Alawite clans. Signs of dissension are so questionable that the ruling clans might be distinguished by the most hermetic information barrier in the world, save for North Korea. An example of the quality, or lack, of information is the death of Assef Shawkat, Assad’s brother-in-law. It’s dissected by EA Worldview, with focus on the paucity of information.

The hermetic information barrier of the Alawite clans is reinforced by a  custom of the religion. The Alawites constitute not only a set of closely related clans, but also a syncretistic religious sect, meaning that the beliefs, tenets, etc. are inherently contradictory. The laws of the sect are secret, closely held by clan elders. With secret laws as the norm, it’s that much easier to impose the information barrier as an extension. But this means that to the Sunni opposition, all members of the Alawite political class are indistinguishable. In the absence of a public record of dissent, there is no reason for the Sunni opposition to accept another Alawite in Assad’s place.

Next: Could Assad be useful in a solution?

Russian Troops Withdraw from Syria (for now)

This post has been retitled because the former title, “Congratulations President Putin!” might give the impression of prejudice towards an outcome desired by the Russians.  This is not my desire. The best of all possible worlds would be a harmonious state in which the Alawite minority lived in prosperous co-existence with the Sunni majority. Unfortunately, such a rosy outcome would be unprecedented for the region. The second best would be a partition of land based on ancestral origins and economic viability. There is a natural expectation, based upon past experience with the Russians during the Cold War and Ukraine, that they will try to provide their Alawite clients with something more than that. I cannot contradict the possibility.

Nevertheless, Putin is to be congratulated, perhaps sardonically, for his tactical agility and consequent lack of predictability. It provides the effect of a force multiplier by  diminishing the abilities of Russia’s adversaries to combine. For example, if Turkey and Saudi Arabia were in the process of attempting to constitute a ground intervention, Putin’s withdrawal, however temporary it may be, constitutes an obstacle. It does so by denying a sense of urgency to Russia’s adversaries.

How temporary could the withdrawal be? Consider these news headlines:

Perhaps Putin should have added this.

The original post follows.

The recent announcement (Reuters), “Putin says Russians to start withdrawing from Syria, as peace talks resume” is a demonstration of tactical agility the West would be hard pressed to match. It is particularly impressive considering the likelihood that Russian engagement and disengagement will have to happen many times before a stable situation is reached, if ever.

The West currently lacks this kind of tactical flexibility.  To achieve the same effect, legions of policy-makers would have to be dismissed, rotated, elevated, and demoted, with a time scale irrelevant to the situation in real time.  We must look back to the tenure of Henry Kissinger to find it.

The lack of Western agility is a remnant of Bloc-World thinking, where the abstraction called  “influence” acquired the status now accorded to digital currencies. In those days, when “influence” was imagined to be an almost bankable commodity, a monotonic foreign policy “push”, supported by ingrained “policy” did not seem absurd. After all, Containment did work.

But since Bloc World has vanished, and unless convincing symptoms to the contrary arise, what were formerly called proxies and pawns have become truculent beasts that their former sponsors struggle to nudge and push around the Middle East chess board. Instead of player against player, black against white, it’s players against the board.

While Putin’s move is hard to match, the U.S. game is getting better. U.S. support for the Kurds in northern Iraq, possibly in contradiction of NATO spirit if not letter, is equivalent to thinking more than one move ahead:

The Russians will be back. But they seem determined not to let the tail wag the dog.

Intel9's world view

Intel9