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Posts tagged ‘NATO’

May 7

NATO and Churchill Yet Again

By Steve Saideman

Almost since the alliance was created, there have been worries about the inefficiency and potential demise of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization [NATO]. The alliance’s burden-sharing has always been uneven, raising resentments among those who over-pay. In Afghanistan, the burden-sharing problem has been far more problematic as it is measured in blood, rather than spending as percentage of GDP. The perceived lack of effectiveness in Afghanistan and NATO’s refusal to engage in Syria feed these fears about the alliance. So, it should be no surprise that in this time of austerity there is much concern about the future of NATO once again.

The reality is, as always, just a bit more complex. If we want to ask “is NATO worth it?” by looking at its past efforts, we need to keep in mind the goals of each operation. If we remember that in most cases NATO’s goals were somewhat limited, then the alliance has been rather successful. In Bosnia, NATO did not end organized crime or produce functional democracy, but it did provide a far more credible force than UNPROFOR, enforcing much of the Dayton Accords. In Kosovo, NATO ended the threat Serbia posed to Kosovo’s Albanian (and Muslim) majority. The effort took months, rather than days, and produced a peacekeeping mission that continues to this day. But in terms of preventing the conflict in Kosovo from spilling over to create regional tensions, the intervention worked. In its aftermath tensions rose in Macedonia, which, for once, NATO jumped on quickly, producing an agreement that required relatively minimal effort to enforce.

Afghanistan is far more complex than these other missions, and NATO certainly over-reached. Building a self-sustaining Afghan government turned out to be far harder than previous efforts. The stresses revealed the seams in the alliance far more than the previous or more recent missions. Even in this case, NATO did not utterly fail. Yes, there were problems with caveats, nationally imposed restrictions on what countries were willing to do, and other means of control that impacted NATO’s effectiveness, but more countries provided more real effort in Afghanistan, despite the costs and the uncertainties than the “willing” countries in the coalition of the willing in Iraq.

The Libyan mission is an interesting contradiction, as NATO had far more limited objectives here but these objectives were far more than what some of those who legitimated the mission (Russia, China, the Arab League) expected. The aim of civilian protection became regime change (because the former logically required the latter), although everyone will deny that. Still, NATO made no commitment to do anything after Qadhafi’s government fell, so the alliance achieved what it set out to do. Sure, the burden-sharing was visibly lop-sided with less than a third of the alliance willing to drop bombs, but NATO’s history of procuring and practicing inter-operability meant that planes were able to refuel in the air many, many times without significant incidents.

Much more quietly, NATO has played a key role in fighting piracy off the shores of Somalia. In the past year, pirate attacks have dropped to near zero. Non-events tend not to get much news, especially when they “occur” at sea. To be sure, this change is not just due to NATO’s efforts, but the coordination provided by the alliance has certainly made a difference.

Sure, NATO is in a crisis right now, as the budget cuts throughout the alliance will only make it harder for the alliance to deploy and will probably exaggerate the burden-sharing problems. Moreover, Europe is more than a bit worried about the American pivot to Asia. Yet the reality is that there is no substitute for NATO in European security. It is easy to dismiss suggestions that the European Union will supplant NATO. The EU has repeatedly failed when called up to act in a crisis, only deploying after NATO does all of the hard work. All efforts to develop a European Security and Defense Policy are stymied by disagreements among the members. Coalitions of the willing may develop when NATO cannot come to a consensus, but these coalitions have all of NATO’s problems (caveats, burden-sharing) and none of NATO’s advantages (legitimacy, practiced inter-operability, etc.)

It always comes down to this: NATO is the worst form of multilateral military cooperation… except for all of the other forms. NATO is generally better than unilateralism, far more functional than UN or EU security cooperation, and mostly superior to coalitions of the willing. Consequently, despite the anxieties, NATO will continue to stick around for a while longer. It may not intervene again in any place soon, but when leaders look around for some military cooperation, NATO will be there.

Jul 9

2 Comments

Bad Options for Syria

By Dan Byman

Option Five. US DoD photo by SRA Alan Port, via Wikimedia.

One of the joys of being an academic and a think tanker is that you can take potshots at policymakers from the sidelines and explain to them — ideally in slightly condescending terms — why their policies will fail, without having to spell out in any serious detail an alternative that has a snowball’s chance of gaining international and domestic support and working on the ground. For over a year now, I and many others have warned that the situation in Syria was going from bad to worse. The initial hope that Bashar al-Asad would go the way of Egypt’s Mubarak and Tunisia’s Ben Ali was not foolish – it was just wrong. Bashar’s regime was pressed hard, and many informed observers saw him as (here I’m quoting the technical term used by a colleague I won’t name) “toast.”

For at least the last six months and probably the last nine, however, such optimism was starry eyed. Syria is a grinding stalemate, with the regime unable to subdue the demonstrators while the opposition is too weak militarily and divided politically to triumph. Meanwhile, the violence escalates. So what to do?

Let’s rule out doing nothing and, for that matter, direct American military intervention à la Iraq. The doing nothing option is the default, and perhaps in the end justified, but it doesn’t require much imagination or expertise to figure out what it means. No one (okay, almost no one) is calling for the United States to invade Syria either – one of the few things that Republicans, Democrats, the Syrian opposition, and the Asad regime can agree on. So we’re left with a few in-between options, and I’ll briefly lay out my views on the pluses and minuses of each.

Option One: Talk Talk (aka “The Annan Plan”). The United States, working with allies, could try to convince the Asad regime to accept a ceasefire and work toward a political transition that removes the dictator and a few cronies and replaces them with more apolitical figures (Yemen is often mentioned as a model for this). The problem is that Asad doesn’t seem inclined to go and is using the breathing space negotiations provide to kill even more. And even if he left, the apparatchiks who would take his place are not technocrats seeking only to serve the Syrian people but rather part of the old system – the same one that the Syrian opposition vehemently rejects and that, from a US point of view, is tied to Iran and other baddies. So while this option fits the criteria of doing something to end the violence, few seem to want this outcome, and there doesn’t to be a way to force the issue.

Option Two: Chokehold. Here we get to standard coercion – using the threat and reality of diplomatic isolation and economic sanctions to push Asad and his regime to give in. However, as University of Chicago political scientist Bob Pape pointed out in his work on sanctions over a decade ago, it takes a lot to force an autocratic regime to surrender power and sanctions usually lack the necessary oomph. And indeed sanctions can strengthen the dictator’s power as they devastate the independent middle class and increase the importance of access to the regime. In Syria, sanctions hit the country hard, but support from Iran and Russia, smuggling, and other work-arounds that countries figure out in duress seem to be allowing Asad to hold on. Syria as a country, however, is being hollowed out.

Option Three: Help the Refugees. Okay, if we want to avoid too much involvement, maybe we can just help the refugees and otherwise alleviate a humanitarian disaster. Here social scientists have a lot to say, with Richard Betts of Columbia warning that claiming to be impartial while intervening is a “delusion” while Sarah Lischer tells us that refugees can often be carriers of conflict. And, of course, helping refugees may perversely increase refugee flows and take the wind out of the opposition’s sails, strengthening the regime by default. And whether we help or not, the killing continues.

Option Four: Arsenal of Democracy. If we won’t do the job ourselves, and negotiations and pressure won’t work, perhaps we can help the Syrian opposition win the war. This, in case you were wondering, is the option I favor. The opposition is being armed anyway, and U.S. and allied support might help make them more competent militarily and strengthen the moderate elements among them. A comprehensive policy to arm the opposition also might reduce its fragmentation. Over time, the opposition could – note the conditional word and all the “mights” I’ve been using in this paragraph – become more formidable. Yet for all that this option has many problems. The opposition, even after over a year of bloodletting, remains deeply divided. And providing the opposition with arms risks strengthening military voices over peaceful ones. The equipment and training disparity between the Syrian Army, poor as it is, and the opposition remains considerable, so even if this approach works it will take quite a long time, during which many innocent Syrians will die. And then the Syrian opposition gets to run a fractured and devastated country.

Option Five:  Angels on Their Shoulders. To speed things up, Turkey, NATO, or the United States – pick your formidable military – could help the opposition as was done in Libya. Using airpower could tip the balance and enable the opposition to overcome the regime’s military advantages in far less time than Option Four would take. Syria, however, is not Libya. Its military and air defenses are better, the terrain is less favorable to air operations, Iran (and probably Russia) would “balance” against intervention and back Assad further, and there would be less diplomatic and domestic support.

All these options are flawed. And, not surprisingly, the most effective ones are the most difficult to pull off. For those who are gluttons for punishment, several of my colleagues at Brookings and I wrote a related, and longer piece on a similar topic. My hope is that others reading and writing on this site will weigh in to expand on these options or lay out new ones, as I think we can all agree that current U.S. policy is getting nowhere.

Jul 5

“Doable” Options in Syria

Guest Post by Matthew Krain

Rwandan Soldiers deploying to Darfur, 2005. USAF photo by Staff Sgt. Bradley C. Church, via Wikimedia.

In the face of a systematic campaign of atrocities against Syrian citizens, challenging the perpetrators is the most effective way to slow or stop the killing. The US and its allies should ratchet up existing sanctions, and pressure Syria’s partners to stop undermining sanctions’ effectiveness. Sanctions are effective in reducing the severity of, and eventually ending, campaigns of mass killings. Already sanctions are beginning to have dramatic impacts on the regime’s viability.

We also need to continue to publicly name the Assad regime and its agents as mass murderers, and shame its allies as accessories to crimes against humanity. Such “naming and shaming” (ungated) pressures perpetrators to change behavior to maintain legitimacy and avoid alienating allies. Strong statements by human rights organizations, the US administration, former Syrian allies such as Turkey, and the UN Human Rights Council are having an effect among Assad’s Alawite supporters. Continued pressure may eventually convince the regime’s remaining allies that Assad’s pariah status will affect their reputations and interests.

Impartial observer missions are necessary for gathering information on the atrocities being committed, but insufficient if the goal is slowing or stopping the killing. When perpetrators of atrocities block observers from massacre sites, shoot at them to keep them from their task, and author new massacres as the ink dries on yet another ceasefire or UN peace plan, they are telling us that they see such missions as toothless nuisances, rather than credible threats to their reputation or security. Once the killings have begun, only interventions that challenge the perpetrators of atrocities slow or stop the killing (ungated).

As Barbara Walter argued here a few weeks ago, “Right now the greatest threat to Assad’s regime is outside intervention in favor of the opposition. The longer Assad can convince the international community to stay out, the longer he is likely to stay in power.” Interventions that challenge the perpetrator signal commitment to stopping atrocities, divert resources from the killing of civilians, make people carrying out the killing worry about the consequences of “following orders“, remove perpetrators from power, or otherwise slow or stop the killing. Need examples? Think NATO vs. Libya last year or in Kosovo in 1999, Australia and the UN in East Timor in 1999, Vietnam vs. the Khmer Rouge or Tanzania vs. Idi Amin in 1979, or India vs. Pakistan in 1971, as opposed to failed “impartial” missions in Bosnia and Rwanda, or most recently in Sudan. Is it surprising that only when AU soldiers disregarded their constraining mandate to actually protect targets were perpetrators deterred in Darfur?

But what is effective is not what is likely to happen, or what is politically possible. Constrained by Russia and China and distaste for further military misadventures in the Middle East, the U.S. is unlikely to directly intervene in Syria. The best “doable” options for now are to keep the pressure and spotlight on atrocity perpetrators, keep their allies feeling the consequences of aiding or shielding them, encourage further defections, and encourage actors such as the UN or Turkey to challenge the current regime and help ease it out of power.

Jul 4

The Need for Multilateral Intervention in Syria

Photo by Fabio Rodrigues Pozzebom / ABr, via Wikimedia.

Guest Post by Reed M. Wood  

The worsening Syrian insurgency pressures the US and its allies to respond.  Two commonly debated options include harsher sanctions and military intervention.  Neither approach is ideal as both risk doing more harm than good, at least in the short-term.  But let’s face it: policy makers are often faced with choosing the best of bad options.  To that end, the best (but by no means easiest) option available is impartial multilateral intervention.

Let me first deal with sanctions.  Sanctions are often popular at home and help well-intentioned leaders feel that they are doing something “good.”  However, they have a mixed record of success, particularly against autocrats.   Worse, sanctions often lead to more rather than less repression and abuse.  Targeted sanctions might mitigate collateral damage, but there is little evidence of their success in deterring serious abuse.

Military intervention has the best chance of ameliorating human costs.  The tricky issue is designing the right intervention strategy.  Not all interventions are equal, and the wrong intervention could prove more costly than inaction.  Most foreign interventions initially provoke a surge of violence—something the international community should prepare for.  Yet, over the longer-term impartial interventions appear better able to mitigate mass violence compared to those that explicitly support the opposition.

The biggest question is how to construct and implement a “neutral” intervention, especially given that Russia is almost certain to block UN peacekeeping.  By no means should the US abandon the pursuit of UN peacekeeping—there’s always the hope that Russia abstains, right?  Yet, until that unlikely scenario occurs the US, its allies, and other states concerned with humanitarian law and global stability should work toward building a peacekeeping coalition capable of both protecting civilians and establishing the conditions that allow both sides to commit to peace.

Constructing such a coalition, especially if done on an ad hoc basis, poses a number challenges (legality, perceptions of impartiality, disagreements over troop commitment, etc.).  Yet available alternatives look worse.  Biased intervention will almost certainly contribute to more violence.  True, Western powers could oust the regime, but human costs will rise rapidly until that occurs and probably after as well.  It would be dangerous to presume a repeat of Libya will play out in Syria.  Gadhafi could muster fewer than 100,000 troops, including mercenaries; estimates of Assad’s forces are closer to half a million.  Even a forceful intervention is therefore likely to take time, creating a large window in which the regime will fill thousands more graves.  Moreover, existing communal tensions suggest the potential for spiraling violence in the wake of regime collapse.  While close parallels to Iraq should be made with caution, recent history is nonetheless instructive.

The point is, direct challenges to the regime might sound appealing, but the political reality is far messier.  Any intervention strategy should anticipate and prepare for unintended surges in violence.  Moreover, they should include a clear plan for resolving the underlying political conflict.  Unbiased interventions stand the best chance of the latter and are no more detrimental to the former.

Jun 28

4 Comments

Syria, Libya, and the Responsibility to Protect

By Andrew Kydd

US Navy vessel firing in support of the NATO intervention in Libya. US Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Nathanael Miller, via Wikimedia.

Over ten thousand people have been killed in the fighting in Syria, and the Assad regime has committed a number of atrocities against civilians, including the recent Houla massacre. NATO intervened in Libya with far less provocation, and this was declared a triumph of the UN Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine, which holds that the international community has a responsibility to protect civilians if they are under attack from their own government. This triumph must surely ring hollow for the families of Assad’s victims today.

In truth, R2P’s application to Libya was seriously flawed. First, the Libyan regime did not commit large scale massacres before NATO decided to intervene. At best, NATO acted preventively, to head off a potential massacre that might have happened had Qadaffi’s forces retaken control of Benghazi, the rebel stronghold. And in the implementation, NATO clearly did not simply attempt to protect civilians, as its UN mandate dictated, they became the rebel airforce and did not stop their strikes until Qadaffi was dead in a ditch. Current opponents of intervention in Syria such as Russia and China are unlikely to have forgotten that an inch of R2P was turned into a mile of regime change.

Can R2P be redeemed in Syria? What would such an intervention look like? The usual concept is an overall threshold for civilian fatalities, that, once crossed, leads to all out intervention to overthrow the regime. This has some points to recommend it, but suffers from two drawbacks: it generates opposition from regime supporters and the cost may deter action, resulting in too high a threshold.

Consider a lower threshold alternative. Imagine if NATO adopted a policy of destroying a government tank, artillery piece, or other military asset for every ten civilians killed by the regime. A massacre such as Houla in which around a hundred civilians died would cost them five tanks, four guns and a helicopter. Massacres committed by the rebel side could be punished more subtly by interdicting supplies from their backers such as Saudi Arabia. Such a policy would at least provide incentives for each side to minimize civilian casualties. It would also shift the balance of power in favor of the rebels, because it would hamper the regime’s use of its advantage in hardware. This is probably ok with the NATO countries, though objectionable to Russia. The main drawback is it might also prolong the war, which would frustrate NATO publics and might in the end lead to more fatalities over time. McArthur was not alone in preferring victory to prolonged indecision. But R2P is meant to produce cleaner fights not quick victories.

Jun 26

1 Comment

Syria Outcome @ a Glance

By Joseph Young and Erica Chenoweth

As our readers know, we have devoted a great of attention to Syria for the past week or so. We polled our contributors and asked them two questions:

What should happen in Syria?

What will happen in Syria?

The first question asks the respondent to play God and the second to play Nostradamus. With sufficient humility, we offer the results of this non-scientific poll of social scientists.

In sum, a majority (60%) of our contributors think that the rebels will increasingly receive military support (weapons, intelligence, training) but NOT direct intervention. Joe Young suggests that:

“The US and international community cannot directly intervene because of objections by Russia/China. By default, the US, France and others will arm and work with the Syrian resistance until Assad is ousted.”

One brave soul (Will Moore) believes that direct intervention may occur but only by “France and/or Turkey” and only “with air support.”

Matt Kocher offers the somber assessment underlying the majority position over what is most likely to occur:

“Nobody with the capacity has the stomach for a full-scale intervention in 2012, but the situation is dire enough that many international actors will not be able to stay completely on the sideline. I foresee a long, slow muddling through and a protracted civil war.”

Oliver Kaplan agrees:

“As a relatively costless and scalable option for international actors, there will likely be increased arming and training of opposition forces. In fact, this is probably occurring already. This could help bring about the defeat of government forces, but could also lead to protraction of the conflict.”

Of course, in the real world what should happen and what will happen does not necessarily coincide. Interestingly, a plurality (48%) felt a diplomatic solution should occur. Page Fortna, an expert on peacekeeping, suggests:

“For [a diplomatic solution] to have any chance of occurring, the broker will have to be acceptable to both sides, and my guess is that of the 3 listed possible brokers a US/Russia mediated deal is most likely to be acceptable to both the government and the opposition.”

By contrast, Barbara Walter feels this is the worst possible outcome as

“(a) neither side has incentives to compromise at this point, and (b) even if they do have incentives to accept a compromise, it would be enforceable over time only with a significant commitment of outside peacekeepers – something no country will be willing to commit. Pursuing a diplomatic solution, therefore, is simply kicking the can down the road.”

Roland Paris offers a potential bridge between the divide between Fortna and Walter. He would like a regional solution and sees the most desirable outcome as a

“negotiated solution brokered by the Arab League, supported by a contact group that includes UN permanent members plus Turkey. To include political roadmap plus a peacekeeping force made up of Arab troops (perhaps a hybrid UN-Arab League mission).”

And Oliver Kaplan suggests that the international community should focus the most on using wedge strategies toward Assad’s Alawite supporters:

“Perhaps the Opposition Council or international actors can devise an explicit policy to protect Alawites, find a cross-cutting cleavage to exploit, and step up communication with civil society and political leaders to try to provide them reassurance (e.g., that they will benefit in any change in regime)….if such a move works, it could sap support from the government and eventually lead to its defeat.”

Erica Chenoweth also argues that the international community should focus less on arming various actors, and more on separating Assad from his main pillars of support:

“The international community should offer ‘golden parachutes‘ (e.g. money, protection, and immunity) to any regime insiders who wish to leave the country and stop supporting Assad.”

Will Moore was one of only two with the same answer for what should and will happen. Although he changes his answer on who should be the intervener, he argues that, “the UN should intervene with ground troops per chapter VII of the UN Charter.”

What do you think? What should happen? What will happen? We will continue to monitor and offer our opinions. Hopefully, this is not a topic we will revisit next year. If the majority opinion is accurate, however, it very well could be.

Jun 12

5 Comments

Intervening in Syria? Some Inconvenient Realities

By Stephen M. Saideman

The world has been far slower in reacting to Syria’s civil war than Libya’s. This is not surprising to experts, as countries have long discriminated in where they choose to invest their efforts. While we tend to hear talk of grander principles, such as the Responsibility to Protect, leaders make decisions based on their own political interests and on what is best for their country. When people lament the absence of political will, analysts can usually explain why international cooperation fails—the disparate interests of the relevant actors. Syria is no exception. In this post, I just want to highlight a few issues of domestic politics and then alliance dynamics that help explain the selectivity of intervention that should make it clearer why the international relations of Syria’s conflict have been less than decisive.

There are two completing strands of thinking about intervention and domestic political interests. The classic argument is that politicians facing domestic difficulties (scandals, economic problems, electoral challenges) may use foreign policy abroad to rally the public at home—the Wag the Dog strategy. In the scholarship on “rally the flag”, the consensus is that the rally effect is real but temporary. There is much less agreement on what causes politicians to use foreign policy as a diversion. The second strand refers to the consequences—that politicians who start wars tend not to stay in office even if they win and especially if they lose.

The relevance here is that elections in the US and France have been seen as restraints on intervention even as the Libyan campaign was not constrained by similar forces. Why not? Well, that leads to the second and third points about specific interest and alliance dynamics.

The reality is that democratic politicians will support intervention when their supporters want intervention, or at least, they are not opposed. This seems obvious and a truism, but it requires us to figure out when relevant constituents will support or oppose intervention. I spent much of my early career focused on ethnic ties—that people will support and perhaps even demand intervention when their kin are in harm’s way. This is just one way to conceive of constituent preferences. I find it more persuasive than the most likely alternative—that the constituents are oil companies and everything is about oil, although that does distinguish Libya from Syria.

Ethnic ties have already come into play in Syria with some Sunni-dominated countries enthusiastically supporting the rebels with whom they identify. Obviously, ethnic ties cannot explain Russia’s support. The fact that Russia does not have ethnic ties with either side does facilitate other interests coming into play, including strategic ones, as there are no counter-vailing interests. In the case of Libya, France had some compelling interests to get involved, including Sarkozy seeking to stop the flow of refugees that might endanger his re-election.

France’s efforts dragged in NATO, which gets us to the alliance piece. There is no other multilateral organization that is equipped to act here other than NATO. The UN, even if Russian and Chinese vetoes are ignored for a moment, does not have the capability to act very forcefully, and has to rely on a more robust proxy—NATO. But members of NATO are tired of nearly a decade of war in Afghanistan and constrained by a fiscal crisis. The best way to get NATO involved is to put the alliance at stake. The US consented to NATO involvement in Bosnia when the time came for President Clinton to keep his commitment to his NATO allies to deploy 25000 troops to either pullout the UN peacekeepers or to enforce an agreement. Members of NATO got serious about Kosovo when the credibility of the institution was put at risk. Libya was a poorly attended NATO operation rather than an ad hoc coalition of the willing because the US faced a choice of France and the UK going by themselves, of three musketeers (US, UK, and France) in an ad hoc effort, or via the alliance.

When it comes to Syria, the challenge is that NATO is not obligated nor has any one actor managed to manipulate the situation to corner the alliance. Turkey made a half-effort by talking about invoking Article V (an attack upon one is equal to an attack upon all) when Syrian forces fired across the border. This had the potential to force NATO action precisely because key members of NATO do not want to have a public fight about whether NATO would defend Turkey. Better perhaps to act preemptively to settle the Syrian issue before Turkey actually tries to invoke Article V.

What does all of this mean? That we should not be surprised by the lame reactions of the international community to Syria’s civil war. Few of the advanced democracies have publics clamoring for yet another war, and NATO thus far has little at stake. This is unfortunate, as we know two other things about intervention and civil war: outsiders are needed to enforce agreements (see Barbara Walter’s work); and that civil wars with interveners on two or more sides last longer than when countries can line up only on one side.

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