Syria and Turkey

The Financial Times headline and lead sentence says it all:  “Syria’s new government ready to run Isis detainee camps, Turkish minister says. Hakan Fidan meets Abu Mohammad al-Jolani and says Donald Trump will back Turkey over Kurdish forces.”  

I believe that is indeed the deal that is being negotiated and I suspect that it does have Trump’s blessing - assumed if not actually stated, and Turkey is expected to ensure that Syria keeps ISIS under control, even if the prison camps are allowed to wither away over time.

I presume that Israel is watching all of this very closely, but, assuming that Ankara can keep Damascus in line vis-a-vis Israel, I don’t expect Jerusalem to complain.  The “only” losers would seem to be the Kurds and they do not have much of a constituency outside of the immediate area.

Assuming that this “solution” continues to guide events, I see a diminishment in open conflict in Syria that involves us and a strengthening of what I consider to be contrarian, if not outright radical, Islamist thought.  I credit Turkish President Erdogan with being superbly attuned to the realities of soft power in the region, even as I am uncomfortable with his objectives.  This reflects my own difficulty in accepting the dramatic change in Turkey’s role in the world during my lifetime.  I knew Ataturk’s Turkey and find Erdogan’s Turkey less compatible with my thinking.

Our emerging policy toward Syria is part of the process of accepting contrarian (radical) Islamist thought and, while unquestionably necessary, that is going to further complicate the resolution of every one of the issues facing humanity.  Given the number of people in the world aligned with some form of Islamist thinking, this process is going to be extraordinarily difficult and time consuming.

I support DOGE, but...

I support DOGE, even as I am worried that mistakes will almost certainly be made.  I spent thirty years in government and I saw enormous waste and massive wrong-headed spending decisions.  Having said that, I would much prefer that reform be made from the bottom up rather than from the top down.  The individuals at the working level are the most knowledgable about what is necessary and what not.  Were I in charge, I would give every single supervisor a cost-reduction target and require them to make the decisions necessary to achieve that level of savings.  I would also caution against over-ambitious fiscal targets.  If my analysis was that a given agency could safely reduce its budget by ten percent, I would require the head of that agency to reduce costs by five percent.  

At the same time that this process was going on,. I would increase the budget in those areas that increases were necessary.  A prime example of which is Defense.  For obvious reasons, this is where the process would be most difficult.  Requiring a supervisor to cut at the same time that you are increasing his budget would require some intense supervision across an enormous bureaucracy.  Mistakes would be inevitable and success would be extremely difficult to achieve, but that does not remove the necessity to do it.  The simple fact is that we can not continue to spend more money than we have.  Borrowing from others, as we are doing now, only works as long as others are willing to loan us money.  The difficulty that we are having controlling our economy and maintaining the value of our currency is already weakening our ability to borrow.  China is leading the charge against us in this realm at the same time that it is challenging us in virtually every other arena - including nuclear arms.

My assessment is that our greatest vulnerability is economic and, in my mind, that stems from the nature of our society.  We are, as a society, fat, lazy, cowardly, greedy and naive.  Very nice, very well-educated, very polite cowards.  Very different from the poorly educated, hard scrabble, riff-raff that built this country.  Those folks had heart and balls enough to get the job done - however they could, whatever it might be.  We seek legislation to protect our rights in the bathroom and demand that our feelings be protected.  My assessment is, that unless we grow a pair and have an epiphany as to the relevance of the need for all people to live a decent life, we will eventually be forced into a nuclear exchange with one or another foreign antagonist.  The state of our economy at that point in time will be largely irrelevant.

Is nuclear war inevitable?

I do not claim any particular wisdom regarding conflict between humans, but I have ninety years of being exposed to personal conflicts and thirty years of being exposed to various international conflicts, sometimes up close and very personal.   I have inevitably developed some theories.  I remember, vaguely, conflicts that developed on and around the schoolyard, in which I learned the hard way that I needed to stand up for myself when confronted by bullies.  Not to do so, resulted in unacceptable relationships. I also well remember my father’s futile efforts to educate me about the realities of the street.  It was not until he forced me to act, that I learned anything valuable.  When I finally stood up for myself physically, I remember being surprised at how easy it was to dominate another human being. It was a lesson that I saw reinforced over and over again in international affairs.

All of that has been a good and proper foundation for foreign policy since humans first stood up on two legs.  I argue that the invention of nuclear weapons has changed things.  I am not a storied warrior, but I have been involved in person-to-person conflict, country-to-country conflict, and I have even tried to moderate, if not resolve, international conflict.  My expectation is that, although there are no guarantees, Trump will manage to reduce open conflict in both Europe and the Middle East, but he will not do the things necessary to avoid the threat of nuclear obliteration arising again in the not too distant future.  A leader, no matter how wise, can not do more than lead a population where it wants to go, and the American public is uninterested in helping the rest of the world live a better life.  What that means is that conflict will continue to bubble up and eventually some idiot is going trigger the exchange of nuclear weapons.  After the combatants that live through the mindless firestorm that results decide who won, they will face the challenge of growing food in poisoned earth and coping with the aftereffects of radiation poisoning in the people who were not blown away in the nuclear firestorm.

I see the nuclear warfare solution to the gross over population of the finite earth to be a less attractive solution than helping one’s neighbor live a better life and I do not see space exploration as being a viable solution, let alone timely enough, to offer any hope.  I argue that we are left with only one choice and that is to be nice to one another.  Apparently something that humans in the aggregate are either unable or unwilling to do.

Trump and Syria.

Politico has an article out today that refers to recent comments by President-elect Trump regarding the situation in Syria.  The essence of the article is captured in the opening sentence:  “Turkey controls the militants that ousted former Syrian dictator Bashar Assad.”  Trump goes on to talk about the situation in a manner consistent with my earlier reading of his probable policy in that beleaguered region.  I would quibble with his choice of words, but not with the general conclusion that he reaches.  I don’t think that Turkey controls the people that have taken over Syria, but I do believe that Ankara is VERY influential and played a key role in supporting their rebellion.  I do not believe that Assad would have fallen without Turkey’s involvement.  As is the case with Putin and XI, Trump claims to get along well with Turkish President Erdogan and that too supports my guess as to his policy inclinations.  

I believe that unless something changes on the ground, Trump will continue to draw down our military presence in the region and will look to Erdogan to sort things out.  As this policy unfolds, his critics, including me, will point out that he is throwing the Kurds under the bus and risking a reemergence of Radical Islamic domination of some part of the Syrian hinterland.  The determining factor being Erdogan, not Trump.  Trump will be comfortable with all of that and the judgement of history will depend on how well Erdogan deals with the various forces at work in the region.  My guess is that he will be driven to damage the Kurds as gravely as possible and will tolerate a more radical form of Islamic governance in Syria than most will like.  Depending on a mountain of imponderables, the possibility is that Riyadh will support Ankara in all of this and that too will tend to make Trump feel that things are moving in the right direction, particularly since it will tend to weaken Teheran.

PS:  What is needed is a rapprochement between Erbil and Ankara, but that utopian dream will not take place while the current leadership controls the two sides of the deep cultural divide.  Ankara would have to ceed control of a large portion of Eastern Turkey in order to pacify Kurdish nationalism.  Radical Islamists will continue to be the only ones offering a third way forward.  Trump is correct in his assessment that there is very little that our military forces can do to address the basic situation that underlies the constant violence.  He oversimplifies when he argues that we have no role to play.  The role that we should be playing is not primarily military in nature.  It is diplomatic and economic in nature, but we are poorly equipped to play in that complicated arena, due to a lack of knowledge about the complexities of human relationships in the region.

I Googled “Radical Islam”

I Googled “Radical Islam” and got the following:  “The academic definition of radical Islam consists of two parts: The first being: Islamic thought that states that all ideologies other than Islam, whether associated with the West (capitalism or democracy) or the East (communism or socialism) have failed and have demonstrated their bankruptcy.”  People living in Europe or the United States do not comprehend the potency of this kind of thinking among populations that are living marginal existences in the Middle East and Africa.  We tend to believe that we can counter the threat of Radical Islam through the use of force.  I accept the necessity of using force, but believe that it must be accompanied by meaningful economic development.  Not just payments to corrupt, self-serving governments, but rather actual economic development that demonstrably improves the lives of populations currently living in poverty.  I have tried to do it.  It is unbelievably difficult and discouraging, but it remains the only way to avoid an eventual nuclear holocaust.

Nowhere in the developed world do I see this motivation driving policy.  Instead, I see the governments of developed countries, our own included, squabbling among themselves for economic dominance.  Among all of the examples out there, the Chinese Communist Party is, presently, the only group that understands the issue, and it is bent on manipulating it to achieve its own very partisan objectives.  Beijing’s Belt and Road has economic development programs in countries around the world, but despite their rhetoric, they are crassly attempting to use those programs to control the populations that they are assisting.  (Their domestic policy that aims to eliminate Muslim thought inside China is a further strategic impediment that weakens their position, despite their tactical success in dealing with major Islamist governments.)  Western governments, to include our own, invest in foreign countries with the sole objective of benefiting themselves, despite mountains of lofty rhetoric to the contrary.  The success of our own economy over the past couple of centuries has made us the envy of the world and that has adverse, as well as positive implications.  Radical Islam is, in my mind, the most extreme reaction facing us today.  Populations infected with this thinking are willing to engage in suicide bombing in protest.  That is about as extreme a human reaction as it is possible to imagine and understand, particularly for very well-fed Americans.

Because we can not conceive of the issue that I here describe, none of our policies are helping defeat the threat posed by Radical Islam.  Killing contrarian leaders does not eliminate the threat.  All it does is improve upward mobility among professional malcontents and further diversify the concepts of hatred that motivate the ideologues.  If you want to eliminate Radical Islam you must, repeat must, improve the lives of all people living in Africa and the Middle East.  In so doing you will, among other things, eliminate suicide bombing and its Western, mindless reaction - over-the-horizon missile strikes.  The task facing humanity is enormous, but it is the only way to avoid an eventual nuclear exchange that poisons some portion of the earth.  I am not optimistic, but I remain hopeful.  After all, our grandparents figured it out while fighting Hitler, Mussolini, and Tojo.  It’s just that those of us who came after that Greatest Generation, couldn’t stay focused and wasted the opportunity that they gave us.

Unexplained aerial events..

The same people that reassured us about the Chinese balloons are now telling us that we don't know what we are seeing in the sky over various parts of the country.  I haven't got the faintest idea what is going on, but I am not reassured that my government is doing its job. I should also admit that I have not seen any strange things flying around over my head.  I can easily conceive of the possibility that there is indeed nothing out of the ordinary happening.  A citizenry that is seeing things that are not there or a government that does not know what is going on.  Both are, unfortunately, equally credible.  If I were influential, I would give fair warning and then instruct the Air Force to shoot one of these things down.  (The same solution that I advocated with the Chinese baloons.)

Trump and Syria.

 I am too far away from Syria to know what is happening, let alone be in a position to predict what the future holds.  Having said that, here is what I think might happen as the new Trump Administration addresses the situation.  I see absolutely no evidence that Trump wants to continue to be in between a huge mix of factions that hate each other.  He is pragmatic enough to recognize Ankara’s position and will want to make a deal with Erdogan, the parameters of which will include a Turkish commitment to keep ISIS in check, as America continues its withdrawal from Syria and lets Erdogan call the shots on the ground.  Assuming that things do work out this way, Kurdish interests will continue to suffer and Damascus will continue to emerge as an ally of Ankara.  Because this development would tend to minimize Teheran’s influence, it would be welcomed by our Saudi allies.  I can not know how Erdogan’s relationship with ISIS will develop, but I do not believe that it will result in a resurgence of a radical caliphate in the region.  Erdogan is more than willing to talk to and work with Islamist leaders that most Americans would consider to be too radical, and his success in helping shape the rebellion in Syria would tend to indicate that he is accomplished in these types of dealings.  This policy will, of course, be criticized by many, given the Kurd’s important assistance in defeating the ISIS caliphate, but I don’t believe that will deter Trump.  An important question mark surrounds the future of the prison camps housing ISIS radicals that are currently guarded by Kurds.  Should the Kurds abandon their role in guarding those prisons, that action will be used by Trump to support his policy.  My guess is that Erdogan would like to be in a position to negotiate the future of those camps, but I am certain that the Kurds would oppose that happening without significant assurances that Erdogan would be unwilling to make, or honor, if he did make them.