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anonymous

The U.S. Withdrawal and Limited Options in Iraq - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...rawal_and_limited_options_iraq

geopolitics

shared by anonymous on 17 Aug 10 - Cached
  • This is all the more important since 50,000 troops will remain in Iraq, and while they may not be considered combat troops, a great deal of combat power remains embedded with them.
  • The United States invaded Iraq in 2003 with three goals: The first was the destruction of the Iraqi army, the second was the destruction of the Baathist regime and the third was the replacement of that regime with a stable, pro-American government in Baghdad.
  • The first two goals were achieved within weeks. Seven years later, however, Iraq still does not yet have a stable government, let alone a pro-American government. The lack of that government is what puts the current strategy in jeopardy.
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  • The fundamental flaw of the invasion of Iraq was not in its execution but in the political expectations that were put in place.
  • And from the American perspective, this government did not have to be pro-American (that had long ago disappeared as a viable goal), but it could not be dominated by Iran.
  • For Iran, a strong Iraq is the geopolitical nightmare.
  • At this point, the Iranians do not have the ability to impose a government on Iraq. However, they do have the ability to prevent the formation of a government or to destabilize one that is formed.
  • The Iranians understand the weakness of America’s position in Iraq, and they are confident that they can use that to influence American policy elsewhere.
  • The American problem is that a genuine withdrawal from Iraq requires a shift in Iranian policy, and the United States has little to offer Iran to change the policy.
  • Two strategies follow from this.
  • The first is that the United States will reduce U.S. forces in Iraq somewhat but will not complete the withdrawal until a more distant date (the current Status of Forces Agreement requires all American troops to be withdrawn by the end of 2011).
  • Another choice for the United States, as we have discussed previously, is to enter into negotiations with Iran.
  • Given all that has been said about the success of the Petraeus strategy, it must be observed that while it broke the cycle of violence and carved out a fragile stability in Iraq, it has not achieved, nor can it alone achieve, the political solution that would end the war. Nor has it precluded a return of violence at some point. The Petraeus strategy has not solved the fundamental reality that has always been the shadow over Iraq: Iran. But that was beyond Petraeus’ task and, for now, beyond American capabilities. That is why the Iranians can afford to be so confident.
  • anonymous on 17 Aug 10
     
    "It is August 2010, which is the month when the last U.S. combat troops are scheduled to leave Iraq. It is therefore time to take stock of the situation in Iraq, which has changed places with Afghanistan as the forgotten war." By George Friedman at StratFor on August 17, 2010.
anonymous

Iraq and Syria Follow Lebanon's Precedent - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...yria-follow-lebanons-precedent

shared by anonymous on 26 Aug 14 - Cached
  • For nearly 100 years, Sykes-Picot defined the region. A strong case can be made that the nation-states Sykes-Picot created are now defunct, and that what is occurring in Syria and Iraq represents the emergence of those post-British/French maps that the United States has been trying to maintain since the collapse of Franco-British power.
  • Sykes-Picot, named for French diplomat Francois Georges-Picot and his British counterpart, Sir Mark Sykes, did two things.
  • First, it created a British-dominated Iraq.
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  • Second, it divided the Ottoman province of Syria on a line from the Mediterranean Sea east through Mount Hermon.
  • The British named the area to the west of the Jordan River after the Ottoman administrative district of Filistina, which turned into Palestine on the English tongue.
  • The British had promised postwar power to both. It gave the victorious Sauds the right to rule Arabia -- hence Saudi Arabia. The other tribe, the Hashemites, had already been given the newly invented Iraqi monarchy and, outside of Arabia
  • And thus, along with Syria, five entities were created between the Mediterranean and Tigris, and between Turkey and the new nation of Saudi Arabia.
  • The most important interest, the oil in Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula, was protected from the upheaval in their periphery as Turkey and Persia were undergoing upheaval. This gave the Europeans what they wanted.
  • What it did not do was create a framework that made a great deal of sense of the Arabs living in this region.
  • The Europeans used the concept of the nation-state to express divisions between "us" and "them." To the Arabs, this was an alien framework, which to this day still competes with religious and tribal identities.
  • It was Lebanon that came apart first. Lebanon was a pure invention carved out of Syria. As long as the Christians for whom Paris created Lebanon remained the dominant group, it worked, although the Christians themselves were divided into warring clans.
  • Lebanon's issues were not confined to Lebanon. The line dividing Lebanon from Syria was an arbitrary boundary drawn by the French.
  • From the outside it appeared to be strictly a religious war, but that was an incomplete view. It was a competition among clans for money, security, revenge and power. And religion played a role, but alliances crossed religious lines frequently.
  • The complexity of Lebanon goes far beyond this description, and the external meddling from Israel, Syria, Iran and the United States is even more complicated.
  • The point is that the clans became the reality of Lebanon, and the Lebanese government became irrelevant.
  • But in the end, the state existed at the forbearance of the clans. The map may show a nation, but it is really a country of microscopic clans engaged in a microscopic geopolitical struggle for security and power.
  • A similar process has taken place in Syria. The arbitrary nation-state has become a region of competing clans.
  • Something very similar happened in Iraq. As the Americans departed, the government that was created was dominated by Shia, who were fragmented. To a great degree, the government excluded the Sunnis, who saw themselves in danger of marginalization. The Sunnis consisted of various tribes and clans (some containing Shiites) and politico-religious movements like the Islamic State. They rose up in alliance and have now left Baghdad floundering, the Iraqi army seeking balance and the Kurds scrambling to secure their territory.
  • It is a three-way war, but in some ways it is a three-way war with more than 20 clans involved in temporary alliances.
  • the most likely outcome is what happened in Lebanon: the permanent power of the sub-national groups, with perhaps some agreement later on that creates a state in which power stays with the smaller groups, because that is where loyalty lies.
  • The boundary between Lebanon and Syria was always uncertain. The border between Syria and Iraq is now equally uncertain. But then these borders were never native to the region. The Europeans imposed them for European reasons.
  • Therefore, the idea of maintaining a united Iraq misses the point. There was never a united Iraq -- only the illusion of one created by invented kings and self-appointed dictators. The war does not have to continue, but as in Lebanon, it will take the exhaustion of the clans and factions to negotiate an end.
  • The idea that Shia, Sunnis and Kurds can live together is not a fantasy. The fantasy is that the United States has the power or interest to re-create a Franco-British invention crafted out of the debris of the Ottoman Empire.
  • There are two issues here.
  • The first is how far the disintegration of nation-states will go in the Arab world.
  • But the second issue is what regional powers will do about this process.
  • All of this aside, the point is that it is time to stop thinking about stabilizing Syria and Iraq and start thinking of a new dynamic outside of the artificial states that no longer function.
  • anonymous on 26 Aug 14
     
    "Lebanon was created out of the Sykes-Picot Agreement. This agreement between Britain and France reshaped the collapsed Ottoman Empire south of Turkey into the states we know today -- Lebanon, Syria and Iraq, and to some extent the Arabian Peninsula as well. For nearly 100 years, Sykes-Picot defined the region. A strong case can be made that the nation-states Sykes-Picot created are now defunct, and that what is occurring in Syria and Iraq represents the emergence of those post-British/French maps that the United States has been trying to maintain since the collapse of Franco-British power."
anonymous

The Turkish Role in Negotiations with Iran - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...turkish-role-negotiations-iran

geopolitics

shared by anonymous on 11 Jan 11 - Cached
  • The Iranians have achieved a similar position. By far the weakest of the negotiators, they have created a dynamic whereby they are not only sitting across the table from the six most powerful countries in the world but are also, like the North Koreans, frequently being coaxed there.
  • If the United States withdraws from the region, Iran becomes the most powerful conventional power in the Persian Gulf, regardless of whether it has nuclear weapons.
  • Given that the United States is officially bound to leave Iraq by the end of this year, Iran is becoming substantially more powerful.
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  • The drawdown of American forces in Iraq is the first step. As U.S. power declines in Iraq, Iranian power increases.
  • If it continues its withdrawal of forces from Iraq, Iraq will be on its way to becoming an Iranian satellite.
  • If Iraq becomes an Iranian ally or satellite, the Iraqi-Saudi and Iraqi-Kuwaiti frontier becomes, effectively, the frontier with Iran.
  • with the most strategically located country in the Middle East — Iraq — Iran now has the ability to become the dominant power in the Middle East and simultaneously reshape the politics of the Arabian Peninsula.
  • Assuming that the United States is not prepared to increase forces in Iraq dramatically, the Iranians now face a historic opportunity.
  • As STRATFOR has said and WikiLeaks has confirmed, it is the Saudis who are currently pressing the United States to do something about Iran, not because of nuclear weapons but because of the conventional shift in the balance of power.
  • The destruction of Iranian naval power is critical, since Iran’s most powerful countermove in a war would be to block the Strait of Hormuz with mines, anti-ship missiles and swarming suicide craft, cutting off the substantial flow of oil that comes out of the strait. Such a cutoff would shatter the global economic recovery. This is Iran’s true “nuclear” option.
  • Iran comes to the table with two goals
  • The first is to retain the powerful negotiating hand it has by playing the nuclear card. The second is to avoid an air campaign by the United States against Iran’s conventional capabilities.
  • The Iranians would not have to invade militarily to be able to reshape the region. It would be sufficient for there to be the potential for Iran to invade. It would shift the regime survival question away from Iran to Saudi Arabia.
  • the choices appear to be
  • accepting the shift in the regional balance in favor of Iran, reversing the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq or attempting to destroy Iran’s conventional forces while preventing the disruption of oil from the Persian Gulf.
  • There is, of course, the option of maintaining or intensifying sanctions.
  • The Europeans are hardly of one mind on any subject save one: They do not want to see a disruption of oil from the Persian Gulf.
  • Therefore, at the table next week will be the Americans, painfully aware that its campaigns look promising at the beginning but frequently fail; the Europeans and Chinese, wanting a low-risk solution to a long-term problem; and the Russians, wanting to appear helpful while hoping the United States steps in it again and ready to live with soaring energy prices. And there are the Iranians, wanting to avoid a conventional war but not wanting to forego the opportunity that it has looked for since before the Islamic Republic — domination of the Persian Gulf.
  • The Turks opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq because they expected it to fail to establish a viable government in Baghdad and thereby to destroy the balance of power between Iraq and Iran.
  • the United States was unprepared for the unilateral role Turkey and Brazil played at the time they played it.
  • It is all very good to want to negotiate as a neutral party, but the most important party isn’t at the table: Saudi Arabia. Turkey wants to play a dominant role in the Muslim world without risking too much in terms of military force. The problem for Turkey, therefore, is not so much bringing the United States and Iran closer but bringing the Saudis and Iranians closer, and that is a tremendous challenge not only because of religious issues but also because Iran wants to be what Saudi Arabia opposes most: the dominant power in the region.
  • The nuclear issue is easy simply because it is not time-sensitive right now. The future of Iraq is time-sensitive and uncertain.
  • If Turkey wants to play a constructive role, it must find a formula that satisfies three needs.
  • The first is to facilitate the American withdrawal
  • The second is to limit the degree of control Iran has in Iraq
  • The third is to persuade Saudi Arabia that the degree of control ceded to Iranians will not threaten Saudi interests
  • Having regional power is not a concept. It is a complex and unpleasant process of balancing contradictory interests in order to prevent greater threats to a country’s interests emerging in the long run.
  • As the Americans have learned, no one will thank them for it, and no one will think better of them for doing it. The only reason for a deeper involvement as mediator in the P-5+1 talks is that stabilizing the region and maintaining the Persian-Arab balance of power is in Turkey’s national interest. But it will be a wrenching shift to Turkey’s internal political culture. It is also an inevitable shift. If not now, then later.
  • anonymous on 11 Jan 11
     
    "The P-5+1 talks with Iran will resume Jan. 21-22. For those not tuned into the obscure jargon of the diplomatic world, these are the talks between the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council (the United States, Britain, France, China and Russia), plus Germany - hence, P-5+1. These six countries will be negotiating with one country, Iran. The meetings will take place in Istanbul under the aegis of yet another country, Turkey. Turkey has said it would only host this meeting, not mediate it. It will be difficult for Turkey to stay in this role."
anonymous

MI6 and CIA heard Iraq had no active WMD capability ahead of invasion - 1 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...panorama-iraq-fresh-wmd-claims

wmd iraq cia invasion

shared by anonymous on 18 Mar 13 - Cached
  • Fresh evidence is revealed today about how MI6 and the CIA were told through secret channels by Saddam Hussein's foreign minister and his head of intelligence that Iraq had no active weapons of mass destruction.Tony Blair told parliament before the war that intelligence showed Iraq's nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons programme was "active", "growing" and "up and running".
  • A special BBC Panorama programme tonight will reveal how British and US intelligence agencies were informed by top sources months before the invasion that Iraq had no active WMD programme, and that the information was not passed to subsequent inquiries.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 18 Mar 13
       
      This makes sense, considering (in my view) the WMD was the *reason* but not the *cause*. I'd wager that even if it HAD been passed down, the Bush admin wouldn't have cared.
  • Butler says of the use of intelligence: "There were ways in which people were misled or misled themselves at all stages."When it was suggested to him that the body that probably felt most misled of all was the British public, Butler replied: "Yes, I think they're, they're, they got every reason think that."
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  • The programme says that MI6 stood by claims that Iraq was buying uranium from Niger, though these were dismissed by other intelligence agencies, including the French.
  • It also shows how claims by Iraqis were treated seriously by elements in MI6 and the CIA even after they were exposed as fabricated including claims, notably about alleged mobile biological warfare containers, made by Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, a German source codenamed Curveball. He admitted to the Guardian in 2011 that all the information he gave to the west was fabricated.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 18 Mar 13
       
      As I learned while reading "The Secret War," the CIA exhibited some laughably awful trust in sources that basically told them what they wanted to hear.
  • Panorama says it asked for an interview with Blair but he said he was "too busy".
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 18 Mar 13
       
      *Snort*. Ha ha.
  • anonymous on 18 Mar 13
     
    "MI6 and CIA were told before invasion that Iraq had no active WMD BBC's Panorama reveals fresh evidence that agencies dismissed intelligence from Iraqi foreign minister and spy chief"
anonymous

Iraq, Iran and the Next Move - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...110425-iraq-iran-and-next-move

shared by anonymous on 04 May 11 - Cached
  • What is actually going on is that the United States is urging the Iraqi government to change its mind on U.S. withdrawal, and it would like Iraq to change its mind right now in order to influence some of the events taking place in the Persian Gulf.
  • The American concern, of course, has to do with Iran. The United States has been unable to block Iranian influence in Iraq’s post-Baathist government.
  • Iraq is vulnerable to the influence of any substantial power, and the most important substantial power following the withdrawal of the United States will be Iran.
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  • The American assumption in deciding to leave Iraq — and this goes back to George W. Bush as well as Barack Obama — was that over the course of four years, the United States would be able to leave because it would have created a coherent government and military. The United States underestimated the degree to which fragmentation in Iraq would prevent that outcome and the degree to which Iranian influence would undermine the effort. The United States made a pledge to the American public and a treaty with the Iraqi government to withdraw forces, but the conditions that were expected to develop simply did not.
  • The United States previously had an Iraq question. That question is being answered, and not to the American advantage. Instead, what is emerging is a Saudi Arabia question.
  • From the Saudi point of view, the critical element is a clear sign of long-term American commitment to the regime. American support for the Saudis in Bahrain has been limited, and the United States has not been aggressively trying to manage the situation in Yemen, given its limited ability to shape an outcome there.
  • Coupled with the American position on Iraq, which is that it will remain only if asked — and then only with limited forces — the Saudis are clearly not getting the signals they want from the United States.
  • If the United States is seen as unreliable, the Saudis have only two options.
  • One is to hold their position and hope for the best. The other is to reach out and see if some accommodation can be made with Iran.
  • The Obama administration appears to have adopted an increasingly obvious foreign policy. Rather than simply attempt to control events around the world, the administration appears to have selected a policy of careful neglect. This is not, in itself, a bad strategy. Neglect means that allies and regional powers directly affected by the problem will take responsibility for the problem. Most problems resolve themselves without the need of American intervention. If they don’t, the United States can consider its posture later. Given that the world has become accustomed to the United States as first responder, other countries have simply waited for the American response. We have seen this in Libya, where the United States has tried to play a marginal role. Conceptually, this is not unsound.
  • The problem is that this will work only when regional powers have the weight to deal with the problem and where the outcome is not crucial to American interests.
  • The pressure from Iran is becoming palpable. All of the Arab countries feel it, and whatever their feelings about the Persians, the realities of power are what they are. The UAE has been sent to ask the United States for a solution. It is not clear the United States has one. When we ask why the price of oil is surging, the idea of geopolitical risk does come to mind. It is not a foolish speculation.
  • anonymous on 04 May 11
     
    "The United States told the Iraqi government last week that if it wants U.S. troops to remain in Iraq beyond the deadline of Dec. 31, 2011, as stipulated by the current Status of Forces Agreement between Washington and Baghdad, it would have to inform the United States quickly. Unless a new agreement is reached soon, the United States will be unable to remain. The implication in the U.S. position is that a complex planning process must be initiated to leave troops there and delays will not allow that process to take place."
anonymous

Obama Wants Us To Forget The Lessons Of Iraq - 0 views

www.tnr.com/...nts-us-forget-the-lessons-iraq

politics war iraq

shared by anonymous on 01 Sep 10 - Cached
  • The plan was to give Saddam a good spanking, make sure all concerned knew who was boss, and go home.  Operation Desert Storm didn’t turn out that way.
  • By the time Barack Obama had ascended to the presidency, this second phase of the Iraq war—its purpose now inverted from occupation to extrication—was already well-advanced.
  • One thing alone we can say with assurance:As far as Americans are concerned, Iraqis now own their war. “Like any sovereign, independent nation,” President Obama recently remarked, “Iraq is free to chart its own course.” The place may be a mess, but it’s their mess not ours. In this sense alone is the Iraq war “over.”
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  • As U.S. forces have withdrawn, they have done so in an orderly fashion. In their own eyes, they remain unbeaten and unbeatable. As the troops pull out, the American people are already moving on: Even now, Afghans have displaced Iraqis as the beneficiaries of Washington’s care and ministrations. Oddly, even disturbingly, most of us—our memories short, our innocence intact—seem content with the outcome. The United States leaves Iraq having learned nothing.
  • anonymous on 01 Sep 10
     
    "For those Americans still persuaded that everything changed the moment Obama entered the Oval Office, let's provide a little context. The event that historians will enshrine as the Iraq war actually began back in 1990 when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, Iraq's unloved and unlovable neighbor." By Andrew J. Bacevich at The New Republic on August 31, 2010.
anonymous

U.S. and Iranian Realities - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...us-and-iranian-realities

shared by anonymous on 01 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Though the Iranians are now in a weak strategic position, they had been on the offensive since 2003, when the United States invaded Iraq.
  • They welcomed the invasion; Saddam Hussein had been a mortal enemy of Iran ever since the 1980-1989 Iran-Iraq War. The destruction of his regime was satisfying in itself, but it also opened the door to a dramatic shift in Iran's national security situation.
  • Iraq was Iran's primary threat after the collapse of the Soviet Union because it was the only direction from which an attack might come.
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  • The United States came to realize that it was threatened from two directions, and it found itself battling both Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias. The purpose of the surge in 2007 was to extricate itself from the war with the Sunnis and to block the Shia.
  • It succeeded with the former to a great extent, but it was too late in the game for the latter.
  • Iran thus came to have nothing to fear from Iraq, and could even dominate it. This was a tremendous strategic victory for Iran, which had been defeated by Iraq in 1989.
  • With Iraq contained and the United States withdrawing from the region, Saudi Arabia emerged as Iran's major challenger. Tehran now had the pieces in place to challenge Riyadh.
  • Former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had fairly realistic visions of Iranian power along Saudi Arabia's northern border, completely changing the balance of power in the region.
  • The Russians also liked the prospect of a strengthened Iran.
  • First, they were fighting Sunnis in the northern Caucasus.
  • Second, an Iranian sphere of influence not only would threaten Saudi Arabia, it also would compel the United States to re-engage in the region to protect Saudi Arabia and Israel.
  • Creating a strategic crisis for the United States thus suited Moscow's purposes.
  • In 2009, it had appeared extremely likely that an Iran loosely aligned with Russia would enjoy a sphere of influence north of Saudi Arabia.
  • By 2013, this vision was shattered, and with it the more grandiose strategic vision of Ahmadinejad and his allies in Iran.
  • It was Stratfor's view that Iran had less interest in actually acquiring a nuclear weapon than in having a program to achieve one.
  • Possessing a handful of nuclear weapons would be a worst-case scenario for Iran, as it might compel massive attacks from Israel or the United States that Iran could not counter.
  • But having a program to develop one, and making it credible, gave the Iranians a powerful bargaining chip and diverted U.S. and Israeli attention from the growing Iranian sphere of influence.
  • ernally, opposition to any accommodation with the United States was strong. But so was the sense that Ahmadinejad had brought disaster on Iran strategically and economically.
  • There is profound domestic opposition in the United States to dealing with the Iranian regime. Just as the Iranians still genuinely resent the 1953 coup that placed the shah on the throne, the Americans have never forgotten the seizure of the U.S. Embassy and the subsequent yearlong hostage crisis.
  • We must now wait and see what language Iran will craft regarding the hostage crisis to reciprocate the courtesy of Obama's acknowledging the 1953 coup.
  • It has interests in the region, however, and chief among those are avoiding the emergence of a regional hegemon that might destabilize the Middle East.
  • It needs a way to manage the Islamic world without being in a constant state of war.
  • A weakened Iran needs support in its fight with the Sunnis. The United States is interested in ensuring that neither the Sunni nor the Shia win -- in other words, in the status quo of centuries.
  • Having Iran crumble internally therefore is not in the American interest, since it would upset the internal balance.
  • While sanctions were of value in blocking Iranian ascendancy, in the current situation stabilizing Iran is of greater interest.
  • The United States cannot proceed unless the nuclear program is abandoned. Rouhani understands that, but he must have and end to sanctions and a return of Western investment to Iran in exchange.
  • There are two threats to a potential resolution.
  • The primary threat is domestic. In both countries, even talking to each other seems treasonous to some.
  • In Iran, economic problems and exhaustion with grandiosity opens a door. In the United States right now, war is out of the question. And that paves the way to deals unthinkable a few years ago.
  • A second threat is outside interference.
  • Israel comes to mind
  • Saudi Arabia meanwhile will be appalled at a U.S.-Iranian deal.
  • The Russian position will be more interesting.
  • Syria was a tactical victory for them; Iran would be a strategic defeat.
  • The Iranian and American realities argue for a settlement. The psyche of both countries is in the balance.
  • But given how the Iranians and Americans see their positions, the odds are, that something will happen. In my book, The Next Decade, I argued that in the long run Iran and the United States have aligning interests and that an informal alliance is likely in the long run. This isn't the long run yet, and the road will be bumpy, but the logic is there.
  • anonymous on 01 Oct 13
     
    "U.S. President Barack Obama called Iranian President Hassan Rouhani last week in the first such conversation in the 34 years since the establishment of the Islamic Republic. The phone call followed tweets and public statements on both sides indicating a willingness to talk. Though far from an accommodation between the two countries, there are reasons to take this opening seriously -- not only because it is occurring at such a high level, but also because there is now a geopolitical logic to these moves. Many things could go wrong, and given that this is the Middle East, the odds of failure are high. But Iran is weak and the United States is avoiding conflict, and there are worse bases for a deal."
anonymous

The Virtue of Subtlety: A U.S. Strategy Against the Islamic State - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...strategy-against-islamic-state

shared by anonymous on 09 Sep 14 - Cached
  • It is important for a president to know when he has no strategy. It is not necessarily wise to announce it, as friends will be frightened and enemies delighted.
  • A president must know what it is he does not know, and he should remain calm in pursuit of it, but there is no obligation to be honest about it.
  • Strategy is something that emerges from reality, while tactics might be chosen.
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  • Given the situation, the United States has an unavoidable strategy.
  • The United States has been concerned about the status of Russia ever since U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt negotiated the end of the Russo-Japanese war in 1905. The United States has been concerned about the Middle East since U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower forced the British to retreat from Suez in 1956. As a result, the United States inherited -- or seized -- the British position.
  • A national strategy emerges over the decades and centuries. It becomes a set of national interests into which a great deal has been invested, upon which a great deal depends and upon which many are counting. Presidents inherit national strategies, and they can modify them to some extent. But the idea that a president has the power to craft a new national strategy both overstates his power and understates the power of realities crafted by all those who came before him.
  • The American strategy is fixed: Allow powers in the region to compete and balance against each other. When that fails, intervene with as little force and risk as possible.
  • For example, the conflict between Iran and Iraq canceled out two rising powers until the war ended. Then Iraq invaded Kuwait and threatened to overturn the balance of power in the region. The result was Desert Storm.
  • This strategy provides a model. In the Syria-Iraq region, the initial strategy is to allow the regional powers to balance each other, while providing as little support as possible to maintain the balance of power.
  • For the United States, there is no threat to sovereignty, but that makes the process harder: Great powers can tend to be casual because the situation is not existential. This increases the cost of doing what is necessary.
  • The American experience in Iraq highlighted the problems with counterinsurgency or being caught in a local civil war. The idea of major intervention assumes that this time it will be different. This fits one famous definition of insanity.
  • There is then the special case of the Islamic State. It is special because its emergence triggered the current crisis. It is special because the brutal murder of two prisoners on video showed a particular cruelty. And it is different because its ideology is similar to that of al Qaeda, which attacked the United States. It has excited particular American passions.
  • the fragmentation of Iraq into Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish regions was well underway before the Islamic State, and jihadism was deeply embedded in the Sunni community a long time ago.
  • Finally, the Islamic State -- engaged in war with everyone around it -- is much less dangerous to the United States than a small group with time on its hands, planning an attack.
  • In any event, if the Islamic State did not exist, the threat to the United States from jihadist groups in Yemen or Libya or somewhere inside the United States would remain.
  • Because the Islamic State operates to some extent as a conventional military force, it is vulnerable to U.S. air power.
  • There is no reason not to bomb the Islamic State's forces and leaders. They certainly deserve it. But there should be no illusion that bombing them will force them to capitulate or mend their ways.
  • In the first place, is it really a problem for the United States? The American interest is not stability but the existence of a dynamic balance of power in which all players are effectively paralyzed so that no one who would threaten the United States emerges.
  • The United States does not have the force needed to occupy Iraq and Syria at the same time. The demographic imbalance between available forces and the local population makes that impossible.
  • The Turks are emerging as a regional power. Their economy has grown dramatically in the past decade, their military is the largest in the region, and they are part of the Islamic world. Their government is Islamist but in no way similar to the Islamic State, which concerns Ankara.
  • The United States must turn this from a balance of power between Syria and Iraq to a balance of power among this trio of regional powers. They have far more at stake and, absent the United States, they have no choice but to involve themselves. They cannot stand by and watch a chaos that could spread to them.
  • It is impossible to forecast how the game is played out. What is important is that the game begins.
  • The Turks do not trust the Iranians, and neither is comfortable with the Saudis. They will cooperate, compete, manipulate and betray, just as the United States or any country might do in such a circumstance.
  • The point is that there is a tactic that will fail: American re-involvement. There is a tactic that will succeed: the United States making it clear that while it might aid the pacification in some way, the responsibility is on regional powers. The inevitable outcome will be a regional competition that the United States can manage far better than the current chaos.
  • It is not clear why he thinks those NATO countries -- with the exception of Turkey -- will spend their national treasures and lives to contain the Islamic State, or why the Islamic State alone is the issue.
  • U.S. strategy is sound. It is to allow the balance of power to play out, to come in only when it absolutely must -- with overwhelming force, as in Kuwait -- and to avoid intervention where it cannot succeed.
  • In this case the tactic is not direct intervention by the United States, save as a satisfying gesture to avenge murdered Americans. But the solution rests in doing as little as possible and forcing regional powers into the fray, then in maintaining the balance of power in this coalition.
  • anonymous on 09 Sep 14
     
    "U.S. President Barack Obama said recently that he had no strategy as yet toward the Islamic State but that he would present a plan on Wednesday. It is important for a president to know when he has no strategy. It is not necessarily wise to announce it, as friends will be frightened and enemies delighted. A president must know what it is he does not know, and he should remain calm in pursuit of it, but there is no obligation to be honest about it."
anonymous

Wikileaks Iraq war logs: every death mapped - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...wikileaks-iraq-deaths-map

war military visualization

shared by anonymous on 23 Oct 10 - Cached
  • anonymous on 23 Oct 10
     
    "The Wikileaks Iraq war logs provide us with a unique picture of every death in Iraq. These are those events mapped using Google Fusion tables" By Simon Rogers at The Guardian on October 23, 2010.
anonymous

Next Steps for Iraq and Afghanistan - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...trategies-iraq-and-afghanistan

geopolitics stratfor

shared by anonymous on 15 Dec 10 - Cached
  • While Afghanistan is likely to continue along its current path, the fate of Iraq hangs in the balance.
  • the troops committed to the war in Afghanistan and the strategy that guides their deployment do not appear set to shift meaningfully in the year ahead.
  • the Afghan war is increasingly looking like a known quantity, even if it is an active war zone.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • In a very real sense, this centuries-old ethno-sectarian struggle is barely contained inside political process. The struggle has not gone away; it has merely moved from one arena — the formation of a coalition and the distribution of power, ministry by ministry — to another: the powers that are and are not assigned to the NCSP, and the means provided to the NCSP to wield and protect those powers.
  • In Iraq, despite the outward appearance of peace, the country remains on the brink. And to understand that, the two issues at the forefront of our mind are 1) the mechanisms that the Sunni will accept as sufficient to wield and defend their share of the political pie, and 2) the understandings — or lack thereof —between Washington and Tehran about what happens next in Baghdad.
  • anonymous on 15 Dec 10
     
    "With Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and al-Iraqiya List leader Iyad Allawi meeting in Baghdad Tuesday night, a governing coalition appears near. And with a review of the efficacy of the counterinsurgency-focused strategy in Afghanistan due to the White House before the end of the week, the Iraqi question appears to be settling out while Afghanistan remains as unsettled as ever. But in looking at the months ahead, the reverse is also true: While Afghanistan is likely to continue along its current path, the fate of Iraq hangs in the balance."
anonymous

The U.S. Withdrawal From Iraq - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...al_coverage_us_withdrawal_iraq

geopolitics middle east

shared by anonymous on 05 Mar 10 - Cached
  • The United States plans to withdraw all combat forces from Iraq by the end of 2011, with the drawdown slated to accelerate following the March 7 parliamentary elections. However, those elections could upset the fragile political situation that has held in Baghdad for five years, albeit with considerable U.S. oversight. Internal ethno-sectarian tensions and external forces with interests in Iraq also threaten to complicate matters. STRATFOR examines the factors that could affect the withdrawal and determine the fate of the region for years to come.
  • The United States is attempting to roll back its military commitment to Iraq substantially, not only to extract itself from Iraq but also to better focus its resources and efforts in Afghanistan. It has done all it can militarily and is essentially waiting out the durability of domestic political circumstances in the country during and following the elections. In other words, the U.S. military is no longer the keeper of the peace in Iraq. The elections and following transition of power will be a test of whether the Iraqis can keep the peace themselves, and the U.S. withdrawal may depend on how the Iraqis answer that test.
anonymous

Turkey Must Tread Carefully Against Islamic State - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...arefully-against-islamic-state

shared by anonymous on 25 Sep 14 - Cached
  • Rumors have long circulated that Turkey has been aiding Islamic State fighters.
  • Turkey's dealings with the Islamic State are much more nuanced than has generally been understood. Last year in July, Stratfor shed light on this dynamic, analyzing how the Turks were caught between two very threatening realities — both demanding simultaneous management — on their southern flank: jihadists of various stripes and Syrian Kurdish separatists.
  • Turkey is all too aware of how Pakistan even today, nearly two generations after it agreed to serve as the staging ground for the U.S.-led effort to counter Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan, continues to deal with the fallout of that war, which has not yet ended.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • From the Turks' viewpoint, the Americans and their Western and regional allies (with the exception of Jordan) all have the option of walking away from the conflict in Syria.
  • Not only does Turkey feel that it will have to deal with the mess in Syria long after other stakeholders have moved on, it also knows that the United States expects Turkey to manage the Syrians as well as other regional matters.
  • Turkey has not forgotten how, during the days of President Turgut Ozal, Ankara cut Iraq's export pipeline in 1990 at the behest of the United States in the run-up to the 1991 Gulf War but was later left with the aftermath as promises of aid disappeared with the subsequent change of U.S. administrations.
  • This bitter experience informed Turkey's 2003 decision to refuse Washington access to Turkish territory for a northern invasion of Iraq. At the same time Turkey is deeply worried about being caught between Saudi Arabia and Iran, who are engaged in a vicious proxy sectarian war.
  • But in the real world, not only does the Islamic State exist, it is actually in competition with Turkey for influence among the Sunni Arabs to the south of the Turkish Republic.
  • Al-Hashimi is also very close to Turkey's main Arab partner, Qatar. Al-Hashimi periodically frequents Doha, which has significant influence among a range of jihadist groups and very likely played a key role in the release of the diplomats, which happened just days after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited Qatar.
  • Clearly Erdogan is not worried about any fallout from a prisoner exchange, especially since the United States recently released five high-profile Afghan Taliban detainees from the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay in exchange for an American soldier, a deal also mediated by Qatar.
  • anonymous on 25 Sep 14
     
    "As the United States begins its full assault against the Islamic State in Syria, backed by Arab allies, the absence of NATO ally Turkey is drawing attention and comment. Just days before the Sept. 22 beginning of U.S. airstrikes, Turkey managed to broker a deal with the Islamic State to return 49 diplomats held in Iraq for 101 days. Contrary to diplomatic and media speculation, however, Turkey is not supporting the transnational, Syria- and Iraq-based jihadist movement known as the Islamic State."
anonymous

Afghanistan: Why the Taliban are Winning - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...nistan_why_taliban_are_winning

geopolitics afghanistan

shared by anonymous on 01 Sep 10 - Cached
  • Almost 150,000 U.S. and allied troops are now in Afghanistan, some 30,000 more than the number of Soviet troops at the height of their occupation in the 1980s. The U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) is now at the pinnacle of its strength, which is expected to start declining, one way or another, by the latter half of 2011, a trend that will have little prospect of reversing itself. Though history will undoubtedly speak of missed or squandered opportunities in the early years of the U.S. war in Afghanistan, this is now the decisive moment in the campaign.
  • In his analysis, McChrystal made two key assertions: The strategy then being implemented would not succeed, even with more troops. A new counterinsurgency-focused strategy just proposed would not succeed without more troops.
  • When the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, Washington had originally intended to install a stable, pro-American government in Baghdad in order to fundamentally reshape the region. Instead, after the U.S. invasion destroyed the existing Iraqi-Iranian balance of power, Washington found itself on the defensive, struggling to prevent the opposite outcome — a pro-Iranian regime.
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  • But the foreign jihadists ultimately overplayed their hand with Iraq’s Sunnis, a decisive factor in their demise. Their attempts to impose a harsh and draconian form of Islamism and the slaying of traditional Sunni tribal leaders cut against the grain of Iraqi cultural and societal norms. In response, beginning well-before the surge of 2007, Sunni Awakening Councils and militias under the Sons of Iraq program were formed to defend against and drive out the foreign jihadists.
  • At the heart of this shift was Sunni self-interest.
  • the strategy relied heavily on capitalizing on a shift already taking place: the realignment of the Sunnis, who not only fed the U.S. actionable intelligence on the foreign jihadists but also became actively engaged in the campaign against them.
  • In Afghanistan, the problem is the opposite. The initial American objective in Afghanistan was to disrupt and destroy al Qaeda, and while certain key individuals remain at large, the apex leadership of what was once al Qaeda has been eviscerated and no longer presents a strategic threat. This physical threat now comes more from al Qaeda “franchises” like al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.
  • Most of what remains of the original al Qaeda prime that the United States set out to destroy in 2001 now resides in Pakistan, not Afghanistan.
  • Despite — or perhaps because of — the remarkably heterogeneous demography of Afghanistan, there is no sectarian card to play. Nor is there a regional rival, as there is in Iraq with Iran, that U.S. grand strategy dictates must be prevented from dominating the country.
  • Faced with a superior force, they declined combat and refused to fight on American terms, only to resurge after American attention shifted to Iraq.) But it is not the Afghan Taliban per se that the United States is opposed to, it is their support for transnational Islamist jihadists — something to which the movement does not necessarily have a deep-seated, non-negotiable commitment.
  • And as a light-infantry force both appropriate for and intimately familiar with the rugged Afghan countryside, the Taliban enjoy superior knowledge of the terrain and people as well as superior intelligence (including intelligence from compromised elements of the Afghan security forces). The Taliban are particularly well-suited for waging a protracted insurgency and they perceive themselves as winning this one — which they are.
  • The Taliban are winning in Afghanistan because they are not losing.
  • The United States is losing because it is not winning. This is the reality of waging a counterinsurgency.
  • First, the core strengths of the Taliban as a guerrilla force are undisputed, and the United States and its allies are unwilling to dedicate the resources and effort necessary to fully defeat it.
  • In reality (if not officially), the end objective now appears to be political accommodation with the Afghan Taliban and their integration into the regime in Kabul.
  • there is no Afghan analogy to the Sunni Awakening in Iraq
  • The underlying point here is that the United States does not intend to defeat the Taliban; it seeks merely to draw them into serious negotiations.
  • The application of military power, as Clausewitz taught, must be both commensurate with the nation’s political objectives and targeted at the enemy’s will to resist.
  • Political accommodation can be the result of both fear and opportunity. Force of arms is meant to provide the former. And the heart of the problem for the U.S.-led effort in Afghanistan is that the counterinsurgency strategy does not target the Taliban directly and relentlessly to create a sense of immediate, visceral and overwhelming threat. By failing to do so, the military means remain not only out of sync with the political objectives but also, given the resources and time the United States is willing to dedicate to Afghanistan, fundamentally incompatible. As an insurgent force, the Taliban is elusive, agile and able to seamlessly maneuver within the indigenous population even if only a portion of the population actively supports it. The Taliban is a formidable enemy. As such, they are making the political outcome appear unachievable by force of arms — or at least the force of arms that political realities and geopolitical constraints dictate.
  • anonymous on 01 Sep 10
     
    "With additional troops committed and a new strategy in place, the U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) is making its last big push to win the war in Afghanistan. But domestic politics in ISAF troop-contributing nations are limiting the sustainability of these deployments while the Taliban maintain the upper hand. It is not at all clear that incompatibilities between political climates in ISAF countries and military imperatives in Afghanistan can ever be overcome. And nothing the coalition has achieved thus far seems to have resonated with the Taliban as a threat so dangerous and pressing it cannot be waited out." At StratFor on September 1, 2010.
anonymous

Iraq: Parliamentary Elections and Iraq's Future - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...ary_elections_and_iraqs_future

foreignpolicy middle east

shared by anonymous on 07 Mar 10 - Cached
  • The ultimate outcome is significant for doing more than just testing the viability of the post-Baathist Iraqi republic. It is also of great importance to the United States, which wants to stick to its timetable for withdrawing its forces from Iraq. Meanwhile, Iran wants to see its Iraqi Shiite allies consolidate — and even enhance — their domination of Iraq. Turkey wants the outcome to contain Kurdish and Shiite power, thereby enhancing Turkey’s role in Iraq. And Saudi Arabia wants limits on Shiite power to emerge as a counter to Riyadh’s regional rival, the increasingly aggressive Iran. Naturally, not everyone in Iraq and abroad will get the outcome they want.
anonymous

Once Upon a Time in Syria - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...once-upon-time-syria

shared by anonymous on 10 Apr 13 - Cached
  • Though the term "Arabist" has been used far more broadly, during the Cold War in Washington it often came to refer to people at the State Department.
  • They tended to have come of age during World War II, were educated at the best private schools in New England, were in some cases descendants of American missionary families in the Middle East in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and by mastering Arabic in their twenties and thirties, spent their entire foreign service careers in one Arab country after another.
  • Syria was often their lodestar: the essential Arab country.
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  • Syria was the throbbing heart of Arabism, the most steadfast country in its refusal to compromise with what, in Syrian eyes, was the post-colonial monstrosity known as Israel.
  • For a U.S. State Department Arabist, a posting to Syria was, in a thematic sense, fundamental to a successful career.
  • Given the fact of almost two dozen Arabic-speaking countries and only one Hebrew-speaking country to which one could be posted, an American diplomat's professional lifetime might be spent among Arabs much more easily than among Israelis. Not to develop sympathies would be inhuman.
  • The Arabists knew that it was a myth that Syria did not experiment with democracy like Israel. Syria had held three relatively free elections in 1947, 1949 and 1954, and all broke down more or less along ethnic, sectarian, tribal or regional lines, with military rule resulting after each failure.
  • The Arabists understood better than anyone else (except, that is, for the locals) that Syria was an artificial state built on a mass of contradictions.
  • It is tempting to deride the old-time Arabists of the Cold War era from the vantage point of 20/20 hindsight. After all, they dutifully communicated the diplomatic positions of one Syrian dictator after another to Washington, and especially so during the three-decade-long rule of Hafez al Assad.
  • But one is forced to argue: What else were they supposed to do?
  • the Arabists dealt with the political reality as they found it.
  • The tragedy of al Assad family rule in Syria is not that it produced tyranny: That tyranny, remember, produced sustained domestic peace after 21 changes of government in the 24 years preceding the elder al Assad's coup.
  • The tragedy is that the al Assads did nothing useful with the domestic peace they had established.
  • Citizens rise above sectarianism, whereas subjects have only sectarianism to fall back on.
  • The Arabists were in Syria and other countries not to plan American grand strategy or to tell dictators how to behave in the midst of a titanic struggle with the Soviet Union (in which America, perforce, supported many dictatorships) but to report perceptively on what was going on in their parcel of the world.
  • The Middle East, wracked by clan, tribal, ethnic and sectarian unrest, will always require area specialists with years of experience living in the region to help Washington make sense of it all.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 10 Apr 13
       
      See also: Internet friend Ed Webb.
  • Supporters of the Iraq War lauded Crocker's efforts to help stabilize Iraq, even as Crocker himself had warned in a 2002 memo that an American invasion of Iraq would unleash internal and regional chaos.
  • The 21st century, in other words, demands individuals with a 19th century sense of the world: people who think in terms of geography, indigenous cultures and local traditions.
  • anonymous on 10 Apr 13
     
    "Once upon a time, Syria was among the most enthralling and beautiful countries on earth, without the forest of hideous concrete architecture that came to deface the outskirts of its cities, without the pollution, and, of course, without the violence and lawless roads of today. Syria was a stage set for the merger of the Bible and the Mediterranean: wind-ransacked plains, littered with archaeological ruins in all the earthen colors of a rich palette, in places like Palmyra and Qala'at Samaan."
anonymous

Israelis, Saudis and the Iranian Agreement - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...s-saudis-and-iranian-agreement

shared by anonymous on 26 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • The mere fact that the U.S. secretary of state would meet openly with the Iranian foreign minister would have been difficult to imagine a few months ago, and unthinkable at the beginning of the Islamic republic. 
  • The U.S. goal is to eliminate Iran's nuclear weapons before they are built, without the United States having to take military action to eliminate them.
  • The Iranians' primary goal is regime preservation.
  • ...28 more annotations...
  • Western sanctions have dramatically increased the economic pressure on Iran and have affected a wide swath of the Iranian public.
  • The election of President Hassan Rouhani to replace Mahmoud Ahmadinejad after the latter's two terms was a sign of unhappiness.
  • The logic here suggests a process leading to the elimination of all sanctions in exchange for the supervision of Iran's nuclear activities to prevent it from developing a weapon. Unless this is an Iranian trick to somehow buy time to complete a weapon and test it, I would think that the deal could be done in six months.
  • An Iranian ploy to create cover for building a weapon would also demand a reliable missile and a launch pad invisible to surveillance satellites and the CIA, National Security Agency, Mossad, MI6 and other intelligence agencies. The Iranians would likely fail at this, triggering airstrikes however risky they might be and putting Iran back where it started economically. While this is a possibility, the scenario is not likely when analyzed closely.
  • There is a bit of irony in Israel and Saudi Arabia being allied on this issue, but only on the surface. Both have been intense enemies of Iran, and close allies of the United States; each sees this act as a betrayal of its relationship with Washington.
  • In a way, this marks a deeper shift in relations with Saudi Arabia than with Israel.
  • It was a massive producer of oil. It was also the protector of Mecca and Medina, two Muslim holy cities, giving the Saudis an added influence in the Islamic world on top of their extraordinary wealth. 
  • It was in British and American interests to protect Saudi Arabia from its enemies, most of which were part of the Muslim world.
  • Absent the United States in the Persian Gulf, Iran would have been the most powerful regional military power.
  • The problem from the Saudi point of view is that while there was a wide ideological gulf between the United States and Iran, there was little in the way of substantial issues separating Washington from Tehran.
  • The United States did not want Iran to develop nuclear weapons. The Iranians didn't want the United States hindering Iran's economic development. The fact was that getting a nuclear weapon was not a fundamental Iranian interest, and crippling Iran's economy was not a fundamental interest to the United States absent an Iranian nuclear program.
  • The Iranians want investment in their oil sector and other parts of their economy. American oil companies would love to invest in Iran, as would other U.S. businesses.
  • There are other significant political issues that can't be publicly addressed. The United States wants Iran to temper its support for Hezbollah's militancy, and guarantee it will not support terrorism. The Iranians want guarantees that Iraq will not develop an anti-Iranian government, and that the United States will work to prevent this.
  • From the Saudi point of view, Iranian demands regarding Iraq will be of greatest concern.
  • From the Israeli point of view, there are two threats from Iran. One is the nuclear program.
  • The other is Iranian support not only for Hezbollah but also for Hamas and other groups in the region.
  • But in the end, this is not the problem that the Saudis and Israelis have. Their problem is that both depend on the United States for their national security. Neither country can permanently exist in a region filled with dangers without the United States as a guarantor.
  • Israel needs access to American military equipment that it can't build itself, like fighter aircraft. Saudi Arabia needs to have American troops available as the ultimate guarantor of their security, as they were in 1990.
  • What frightens them the most about this agreement is that fact. If the foundation of their national security is the American commitment to them, then the inability to influence Washington is a threat to their national security.
  • The fact is that neither the Saudis nor the Israelis have a potential patron other than the United States.
  • The United States is not abandoning either Israel or Saudi Arabia. A regional policy based solely on the Iranians would be irrational. What the United States wants to do is retain its relationship with Israel and Saudi Arabia, but on modified terms.
  • The modification is that U.S. support will come in the context of a balance of power, particularly between Iran and Saudi Arabia. While the United States is prepared to support the Saudis in that context, it will not simply support them absolutely.
  • The Saudis and Israelis will have to live with things that they have not had to live with before -- namely, an American concern for a reasonably strong and stable Iran regardless of its ideology.
  • The American strategy is built on experience in Iraq and Afghanistan. Washington has learned that it has interests in the region, but that the direct use of American force cannot achieve those goals, partly because imposing solutions takes more force than the United States has and partly because the more force it uses, the more resistance it generates. Therefore, the United States needs a means of minimizing its interests, and pursuing those it has without direct force.
  • Saudi Arabia is not abandoned, but nor is it the sole interest of the United States.
  • In the same sense, the United States is committed to the survival of Israel.
  • If Iranian nuclear weapons are prevented, the United States has fulfilled that commitment, since there are no current threats that could conceivably threaten Israeli survival. Israel's other interests, such as building settlements in the West Bank, do not require American support.
  • With this opening to Iran, the United States will no longer be bound by its Israeli and Saudi relationships. They will not be abandoned, but the United States has broader interests than those relationships, and at the same time few interests that rise to the level of prompting it to directly involve U.S. troops.
  • anonymous on 26 Nov 13
     
    "A deal between Iran and the P-5+1 (the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany) was reached Saturday night. The Iranians agreed to certain limitations on their nuclear program while the P-5+1 agreed to remove certain economic sanctions. The next negotiation, scheduled for six months from now depending on both sides' adherence to the current agreement, will seek a more permanent resolution. The key players in this were the United States and Iran. "
anonymous

Letter from Kurdistan | Stratfor - 3 views

www.stratfor.com/...letter-kurdistan

shared by anonymous on 11 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • The armies fought to the limits of their empires and, after a series of wars culminating in the Treaty of Zuhab of 1639, the Zagros Mountains came to define the borderland between the Ottomans and Persians, with the Kurds stuck in the middle.
  • The Turkic-Persian competition is again being fought in Kurdistan, only this time, energy pipelines have taken the place of gilded cavalry.
  • Roughly 25 million Kurds occupy a region that stretches from the eastern Taurus Mountains in Turkey through the Jazira Plateau of northeastern Syria across the mountains and plateaus of southeastern Anatolia before dead-ending into the northern spine of the Zagros Mountains, which divide Iran and Iraq.
  • ...27 more annotations...
  • This is a territory spread across four nations with bitter histories and a shared commitment to prevent Kurdish aspirations for independence from eroding their territorial integrity.
  • the Kurds remained too divided and weak to become masters of their own fate able to establish a sovereign Kurdish homeland.
  • But unique circumstances over the past decade enabled a politically coherent Iraqi Kurdistan to temporarily defy its own history and inch toward quasi-independence.
  • The chain of events began with the 2003 toppling of Saddam Hussein.
  • His attempts to eradicate Iraq's Kurdish population through chemical attacks in the Anfal campaign of the late 1980s and other aggressions in the region eventually led to the creation of a U.S.-imposed no-fly zone in northern Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War.
  • Iraq's Kurdish leadership put aside their differences to form the Kurdistan Regional Government
  • When U.S. troops withdrew from Iraq, a nervous Kurdistan looked to energy firms as their next-best insurance policy.
  • as tensions with Baghdad grew over the distribution of energy revenues, the Iraqi Kurds unexpectedly found a sponsor in Ankara.
  • a new strategy toward its Kurdish population. Instead of suppressing Kurdish autonomy with an iron fist, Ankara went from regarding Kurds as confused "mountain Turks" to recognizing Kurdish language and cultural rights and launching its most ambitious peace negotiation to date with the Kurdistan Workers' Party.
  • The Iranian regime was busy defending its allies in Syria and Lebanon while trying to manage a highly antagonistic relationship with the United States.
  • A cooperative Ankara, a weak Damascus, a preoccupied Tehran, an overwhelmed Baghdad and a host of anxious investors formed the ingredients for an audacious pipeline project.
  • When the pipeline quietly skirted past the power plant it was supposed to feed, underwent a conversion to transport oil and began heading northward to Turkey, the secret was out: Turkey and the Kurdistan Regional Government were working to circumvent Baghdad and independently export Kurdish energy.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 11 Dec 13
       
      This gets my vote for a future 'proximal cause' of a regional dispute that has yet to flourish.
  • As the pipeline construction progressed, Kurdish peshmerga forces continued spreading beyond formal Kurdistan Regional Government boundaries in disputed areas and held their ground against demoralized Iraqi army forces.
  • And in the name of guarding against a real and persistent jihadist threat, Kurdish forces built deep, wide ditches around the city of Arbil and are now building one around the disputed oil-rich city of Kirkuk, marking the outer bounds of a slowly expanding Kurdish sphere of influence.
  • We have now arrived at the question of when, and not if, Kurdish oil will flow to Turkey without Baghdad's consent.
  • Turkey has put itself in a position where it can receive 250,000 to 300,000 barrels per day of crude from Iraqi Kurdistan
  • Plans are quietly being discussed to build another parallel line on the Turkish side to Ceyhan to completely divorce the pipeline infrastructure from any claims by Baghdad.
  • The speed and cunning with which the pipeline was completed demand respect, even -- however reluctantly -- from an outraged Baghdad.
  • Iran and the United States are both serious about reaching a strategic rapprochement in their long-hostile relationship. Though there will be obstacles along the way, the foundation for a U.S.-Iranian detente has been laid.
  • For now, the United States is trying to avoid becoming entangled in this political morass, prioritizing its negotiation with Iran while publicly maintaining a "one Baghdad, one Iraq" policy.
  • the sharpest tools Iran and its allies in Baghdad have to undermine Turkey's alliance with the Kurdistan Regional Government are the Kurds themselves.
  • The past decade of Kurdish unity between Massoud Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party and Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan is highly anomalous and arguably temporary.
  • On the surface, the Kurdistan Democratic Party and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan have united their peshmerga forces into a single, unified ministry. In reality, the political lines dividing Peshmerga forces remain sharper than ever.
  • One does not even have to reach far back in history to get a sense of just how deep Kurdish rivalries can run. The Kurdistan Democratic Party and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan were engaged in an all-out civil war from 1994 to 1996 that arose from a property dispute.
  • the Kurdistan Democratic Party reached out to Ankara for assistance, while the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan took help from Iran and even Saddam Hussein.
  • But matters of territorial integrity, financial sovereignty and nationalism are not easily trifled with at the intersection of empires.
  • "you know … we have a saying here. Kurdistan is a tree. After a long time, we grow tall, we become full of green leaves and then the tree shrivels and becomes bare. Right now, our leaves are green. Give it enough time. This tree won't die, but our leaves will fall to the ground again."
  • anonymous on 11 Dec 13
     
    "At the edge of empires lies Kurdistan, the land of the Kurds. The jagged landscape has long been the scene of imperial aggression. For centuries, Turks, Persians, Arabs, Russians and Europeans looked to the mountains to buffer their territorial prizes farther afield, depriving the local mountain dwellers a say in whose throne they would ultimately bow to."
anonymous

Fourth Quarter Forecast 2010 - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...7_fourth_quarter_forecast_2010

geopolitics forecast predictions

shared by anonymous on 13 Oct 10 - Cached
  • in Afghanistan, there is no real “victory” to be had, and the question is just how much needs to be accomplished before U.S. forces can withdraw.
  • The United States will be forced once again this quarter to balance the reality that Pakistan is both a necessary ally in the war in Afghanistan and a battlefield in its own right.
  • shape two other global trends
  • ...34 more annotations...
  • Russia will strengthen its influence over former Soviet republics Belarus, Ukraine and the Central Asian “Stans” while reaching into Moldova and the Baltics to extend its influence along the European frontier.
  • China is often the focus of U.S. domestic politics, particularly during times of economic trouble, and the upcoming election is no different. China’s yuan policy is the most obvious target, but while Washington is unlikely to carry out any action that will fundamentally harm economic ties with Beijing, the political perception of actions could have a more immediate impact.
  • In this quarter, Washington will be both preoccupied with the Congressional elections and seeking ways to compromise enough to get out of its long-running wars. The election distraction gives China and Russia a brief opening, and neither is likely to pass up the opportunity to accelerate and consolidate its influence in its near abroad.
  • The U.S.-Iranian Struggle in Iraq
  • The War in Afghanistan
  • The Russian Resurgence
  • U.S.-Chinese Tensions
  • This sparring will continue in the fourth quarter, with one rather significant exception: Washington and Tehran are likely to reach a preliminary agreement on the factional balance in Baghdad, with a new power-sharing government for Iraq emerging.
  • no major strategic shift is likely to occur before the strategy review being prepared for the end of the year is completed.
  • consolidate gains made in Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Belarus and Kyrgyzstan.
  • Moscow will also assert itself in Moldova and the Baltics to prepare the ground for the future expansion of Russian influence there.
  • With its sights on reinforcing its leadership in Europe, Berlin will not look for a break in its ties with Russia
  • the two countries will prevent their relationship from fundamentally breaking down this quarter.
  • a tenuous stability globally
  • Two areas where this could become unhinged in the quarter are Europe and U.S.-China relations.
  • The battle inside the Kremlin will intensify in the fourth quarter as the tandem of Russian President Dmitri Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin begins to purge high-level Russian figures and the campaign season leading up to the 2011 legislative and 2012 presidential elections starts.
  • Islamabad will continue working with Washington in the counterinsurgency offensive against Taliban and al Qaeda-led transnational jihadists, but tensions have become evident
  • Recovery from the massive floods that took place in the third quarter will consume most of the Pakistani state’s focus in the fourth quarter.
  • Domestically, the Justice and Development Party government will focus on consolidating the gains it made with the referendum on constitutional changes approved in September.
  • The bigger competition is playing out between Mubarak and his allies and the army’s top brass over a presidential succession plan.
  • China will continue showing a strong sense of purpose in pursuing its influence in its periphery.
  • Beijing will continue its active fiscal stimulus and relatively loose monetary policies amid concerns of slowing growth too quickly, with the intention of carrying out those structural reforms in a way that will limit the associated negative effects on growth and social stability.
  • The fourth quarter will see more such appearances by the new heir apparent as he begins to build his public image and the elder Kim manages the various elite interests in North Korea to build support for his son.
  • Nigeria will not see a sustained militant campaign this quarter, but there will still be an increased level of unrest in the Niger Delta, as well as in other parts of the country, as militants’ political patrons use their proxies to intimidate and undermine their political opponents.
  • Preparations for the referendum on Southern Sudanese independence will be the primary focus for both the north and the south this quarter.
  • High levels of violence between Islamist insurgents and African Union (AU) Mission in Somalia/Transitional Federal Government forces will continue, but neither side will be able to tip the scales enough to achieve a strategic victory.
  • Germany will continue using the economic crisis to impose its vision for more stringent European economic requirements on its neighbors.
  • A key issue that the two are already cooperating on is the debate on the European Union’s next budget period (2014-2020), which is set to intensify in the fourth quarter.
  • Central Europeans, including the Baltic States, will continue attempting to re-engage the United States in the region, particularly via ballistic missile defense and military cooperation.
  • After losing its two-thirds legislative majority, the ruling party now has an imperative to push through as much legislation as it can to expand the executive branch’s powers before the legislative session concludes at the end of the year and more opposition lawmakers are seated in January.
  • The more vulnerable Venezuela becomes, the harder-pressed it will be to find an external ally willing to provide the economic and political capital needed to sustain the regime.
  • Brazil will have a presidential runoff election Oct. 31, but the country’s attention is primarily occupied with its currency crisis.
  • Brazil will continue its military modernization plan and will play a more proactive rol
  • the coming quarter will see a more defined balance of power emerge among the drug-trafficking organizations within Mexico
  • anonymous on 13 Oct 10
     
    "The U.S. preparation to disengage from Iraq and Afghanistan will remain the international system's center of gravity in the fourth quarter." By StratFor on October 13, 2010.
anonymous

Never Fight a Land War in Asia - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...0228-never-fight-land-war-asia

shared by anonymous on 01 Mar 11 - Cached
  • First, why is fighting a land war in Asia a bad idea? Second, why does the United States seem compelled to fight these wars? And third, what is the alternative that protects U.S. interests in Asia without large-scale military land wars?
  • Let’s begin with the first question, the answer to which is rooted in demographics and space. The population of Iraq is currently about 32 million. Afghanistan has a population of less than 30 million. The U.S. military, all told, consists of about 1.5 million active-duty personnel (plus 980,000 in the reserves), of whom more than 550,000 belong to the Army and about 200,000 are part of the Marine Corps. Given this, it is important to note that the United States strains to deploy about 200,000 troops at any one time in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that many of these troops are in support rather than combat roles. The same was true in Vietnam, where the United States was challenged to field a maximum of about 550,000 troops (in a country much more populous than Iraq or Afghanistan) despite conscription and a larger standing army. Indeed, the same problem existed in World War II.
  • When the United States fights in the Eastern Hemisphere, it fights at great distances, and the greater the distance, the greater the logistical cost. More ships are needed to deliver the same amount of materiel, for example. That absorbs many troops. The logistical cost of fighting at a distance is that it diverts numbers of troops (or requires numbers of civilian personnel) disproportionate to the size of the combat force.
  • ...29 more annotations...
  • Regardless of the number of troops deployed, the U.S. military is always vastly outnumbered by the populations of the countries to which it is deployed. If parts of these populations resist as light-infantry guerrilla forces or employ terrorist tactics, the enemy rapidly swells to a size that can outnumber U.S. forces, as in Vietnam and Korea. At the same time, the enemy adopts strategies to take advantage of the core weakness of the United States — tactical intelligence. The resistance is fighting at home. It understands the terrain and the culture. The United States is fighting in an alien environment. It is constantly at an intelligence disadvantage. That means that the effectiveness of the native forces is multiplied by excellent intelligence, while the effectiveness of U.S. forces is divided by lack of intelligence.
  • The United States compensates with technology,
  • from space-based reconnaissance and air power to counter-battery systems and advanced communications. This can make up the deficit but only by massive diversions of manpower from ground-combat operations. Maintaining a helicopter requires dozens of ground-crew personnel. Where the enemy operates with minimal technology multiplied by intelligence, the United States compensates for lack of intelligence with massive technology that further reduces available combat personnel. Between logistics and technological force multipliers, the U.S. “point of the spear” shrinks. If you add the need to train, relieve, rest and recuperate the ground-combat forces, you are left with a small percentage available to fight.
  • The paradox of this is that American forces will win the engagements but may still lose the war.
  • the United States is well-suited for the initial phases of combat, when the task is to defeat a conventional force. But after the conventional force has been defeated, the resistance can switch to methods difficult for American intelligence to deal with.
  • The example of the capitulation of Germany and Japan in World War II is frequently cited
  • The back of the Wehrmacht was broken by the Soviets on their own soil with the logistical advantages of short supply lines.
  • The Germans had no appetite for continuing a resistance against the Russians and saw surrendering to the Americans and British as sanctuary from the Russians.
  • As for Japan, it was not ground forces but air power, submarine warfare and atomic bombs that finished them — and the emperor’s willingness to order a surrender.
  • Had the Japanese emperor been removed, I suspect that the occupation of Japan would have been much more costly.
  • Neither Germany nor Japan are examples in which U.S. land forces compelled capitulation and suppressed resistance.
  • The problem the United States has in the Eastern Hemisphere is that the size of the force needed to occupy a country initially is much smaller than the force needed to pacify the country.
  • Some people argue that the United States is insufficiently ruthless in prosecuting war, as if it would be more successful without political restraints at home.
  • The guerrilla has built-in advantages in warfare for which brutality cannot compensate.
  • Given all this, the question is why the United States has gotten involved in wars in Eurasia four times since World War II.
  • In each case it is obvious: for political reasons.
  • In each case, the military was given an ambiguous mission. This was because a clear outcome — defeating the enemy — was unattainable.
  • There are two problems with American strategy.
  • The first is using the appropriate force for the political mission.
  • Moreover, it requires an offensive mission. Defensive missions (such as Vietnam and Korea) by definition have no terminal point or any criteria for victory.
  • Having destroyed the conventional forces of Iraq, the United States was unprepared for the Iraqi response, which was guerrilla resistance on a wide scale.
  • The purpose of a military is to defeat enemy conventional forces. As an army of occupation against a hostile population, military forces are relatively weak.
  • By having an unclear mission, you have an uncertain terminal point. When does it end?
  • Donald Rumsfeld once said, “You go to war with the Army you have. They’re not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time.” I think that is a fundamental misunderstanding of war. You do not engage in war if the army you have is insufficient.
  • Diplomacy can find the common ground between nations. It can also be used to identify the hostility of nations and use that hostility to insulate the United States by diverting the attention of other nations from challenging the United States.
  • Diplomacy for the United States is about maintaining the balance of power and using and diverting conflict to manage the international system. Force is the last resort, and when it is used, it must be devastating.
  • The argument I have made, and which I think Gates is asserting, is that at a distance, the United States cannot be devastating in wars dependent on land power. That is the weakest aspect of American international power and the one the United States has resorted to all too often since World War II, with unacceptable results.
  • An elective war in which the criteria for success are unclear and for which the amount of land force is insufficient must be avoided. That is Gates’ message
  • As with the Monroe Doctrine, it should be elevated to a principle of U.S. foreign policy, not because it is a moral principle but because it is a very practical one.
  • anonymous on 01 Mar 11
     
    "U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, speaking at West Point, said last week that "Any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should have his head examined.""
anonymous

How a Libyan No-fly Zone Could Backfire - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...yan-no-fly-zone-could-backfire

geopolitics libya

shared by anonymous on 08 Mar 11 - Cached
  • Therefore, a no-fly zone would begin with airstrikes on known air defense sites. But it would likely continue with sustained patrols by SEAD aircraft armed with anti-radiation missiles poised to rapidly confront any subsequent threat that pops up.
  • That means there will be no opportunity to determine whether the sites are located in residential areas or close to public facilities such as schools or hospitals.
  • Previous regimes, hoping to garner international support, have deliberately placed their systems near such facilities to force what the international media would consider an atrocity. Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi does not seem like someone who would hesitate to cause civilian casualties for political advantage. Thus, the imposition of a no-fly zone could rapidly deteriorate into condemnations for killing civilians of those enforcing the zone ostensibly for humanitarian purposes.
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  • Indeed, attacks on air defenses could cause substantial casualties, turning a humanitarian action into one of considerable consequence in both humanitarian and political terms.
  • The more important question is what exactly a no-fly zone would achieve.
  • Even with a no-fly zone, Gadhafi would still be difficult for the rebels to defeat, and Gadhafi might still defeat the rebels.
  • The attractiveness of the no-fly zone in Iraq was that it provided the political illusion that steps were being taken, without creating substantial risks, or for that matter, actually doing substantial damage to Saddam Hussein’s control over Iraq.
  • The no-fly zone remained in place for about 12 years without forcing change in Saddam’s policies
  • It should also be remembered that the same international community that condemned Saddam Hussein as a brutal dictator quite easily turned to condemn the United States both for deposing him and for the steps its military took in trying to deal with the subsequent insurgency. It is not difficult to imagine a situation where there is extended Libyan resistance to the occupying force followed by international condemnation of the counterinsurgency effort.
  • anonymous on 08 Mar 11
     
    "Calls are growing for a no-fly zone over Libya, but a power or coalition of powers willing to enforce one remains elusive. In evaluating such calls, it is useful to remember that in war, Murphy's Law always lurks. What can go wrong will go wrong, in Libya as in Iraq or Afghanistan."
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