Syria, Hard Power, Russia and Iran

A little more than a day ago, rebels in northern Syria crossed the boundary between themselves and government forces, launching what appears to have been a surprisingly successful offensive, the first in years, their first successes in a long time. Indeed, at least in Canada, the Syrian Civil War has not been much in the news, overshadowed by other conflicts. One could even argue that this offensive is the product of those other conflicts, one of their knock consequences, as it were. Why is this important? What does it tell us about the state of foreign policy. 

Foreign policy is a complicated thing that is subject to a range of contingencies. There are appreciable differences in the way different scholars and political figures view foreign policy and think about what their country should be doing on the international stage. My intention is not really to get into that and I don't want to turn other people's tragedies -- people caught up in the fighting -- into my own soapbox. 

The rebel offensive was not, in fact, new. Its size, scope, and objectives seem to be new but even while most of our media were ignoring it, fighting has been going on in Syria. We should also have no illusions about the rebels. They do include pro-democracy forces. But, they also include Islamicists with whom the supporters of democracy and equality might otherwise have little truck or trade. 

What is interesting to me is the scope and depth of this offensive. Rebel forces contend that the offensive itself is a response to government and Russian (I mention Russia for a reason) bombings aimed to destabilize redevelopment in rebel controlled parts of the country. 

Livemap, a good place to get relatively current information, shows the rebel offensive across large swath of the border previously separating them from government forces. Moreover, rebel forces seem to be gaining ground rapidly, sweeping past check points, overwhelming what appear to be relatively limited government forces and taking control -- according to some news reports -- of significant military equipment. 

What happened? How could the rebels have been so successful and what does this mean? The Syrian Civil War, we need to remember, is a multi-front, multi-force war with extensive foreign intervention. Iran and Russia have supplied forces and significant military equipment and expertise to the Syrian government. Without this support, it is likely that it would have collapsed. The Islamic State, at one point, controlled large swaths of Syrian territory -- although few significant population centres -- while Kurdish and other forces control other parts of territory. Some rebel groups "reconciled" to the government and their forces now fight on the government side and Turkey directly intervened, creating a security border, of some sort, in the north supposedly protecting against Kurdish inclusion. There are also shifting alliances. Kurdish forces allied to other democratic forces have worked with government forces to prevent further Turkish intrusion while both sides fought against the Islamic state, tending to stay out of each others' way, rather than working together. 

Syria became a proxy war of sorts in the reconfiguring power relations of the Middle East. Iran and Russia backed the government Assad regime while Turkey and the US backed some of the rebel groups. The end result is a fractured and divided country, a massive refugee problem, and an incredible death toll. 

It would be difficult to pin down all the different interests. I don't think Turkey is, for example, looking to dramatically expand their sphere of interest in Syria, at least that is the noise they are making while Russia and Iran (also working together against Ukraine) do seem to want to expand their authority and prop up their allies in the government. Because of the manifest threat from the Islamic state, other countries -- such as the US -- were willing to play a more limited role, supporting some groups and having some modest military presence. Syria might also not have been viewed as an area of pressing US concern or interest, as well, with the US at the time bogged down in its failed intervention in Afghanistan and the morass that became Iraq. 

For its part, Russia seems to have been OK with a piece of the pie, as it were, and a frozen conflict. A frozen conflict is a conflict that continues with either limited or low level fighting, few gains by anybody, but no peace. For a range of reasons, Putin-era Russian foreign policy was OK with frozen conflicts. It has a number: Transnistria, Georgia, the Donbas and Crimea, along with Syria. Russia also propped up (under the guise of peacekeeping) Armenia in its conflict with Azerbaijan.

There may be advantages to frozen conflicts from a Russian perspective. Russia is interested in extending its power and hard power is one of the few weapons it has at its disposal. It is on the wrong side of international law in most of these conflicts (say, in Georgia, the Ukraine, Transnistria) and so international mediation that respected international law is a no go for them. In addition to that, the governments of a range of country (China, India, Israel, the central Asian republics) were willing to ignore international law or at least look the other way because they had self interested reasons to maintain some kind of positive relationship with Russia. While democratic countries in the west had either (1) little interest in these parts of the world or (2) in the case of Syria, were willing to let Russia and its proxies bring down a huge hunk of the Islamic State. 

The problem highlighted by what is going on in Syria is that this approach to foreign policy -- to live with frozen conflicts and resolve problems through hard power -- might have reached its limits. It failed completely in Nagorno-Karabakh.  It took the Azeris ten years, but they had ten years because it was a frozen conflict. Armenian forces collapsed and Russia was in no position -- with about 90% of its forces engaged in Ukraine -- to do anything. The result was that Armenia now no longer wants to be part of the Russian orbit. Likewise, the pro-democratic forces in Georgia don't seem willing to go down without a fight. They might not win, but the process is not going to be easy or smooth. And, the Syrian government now seems to be caught flat footed and, at least right now, don't have a response. Their main arms suppliers (Russia and Iran) have to direct their arms supplies elsewhere with Hezbollah having taken a pounding from Israel and the Russian offensive in Ukraine requiring more and more weapons. 

Russia and Iran have been, so far, able to fight multi-front conflicts because of vast energy wealth, but the ability to fight a conflict is different from winning it. The rebels in Syria are showing that.  

Russia and the War in Ukraine

By any account, the war in Ukraine has been a disaster for just about all concerned, but for different reasons. For the Ukrainian people it has created a near disaster with large parts of the country occupied, infrastructure under constant attack, mass civilian deaths and deportations, and significant military and economic losses. For Russian — and specifically the Russian government — that situation is not as bad but it is really bad. I will confess that I don’t know if Ukraine will, in the end, win the war. I actually don’t even know what that means. What I do know is that Russia has already lost. How so? Just about every aspect of this conflict from the perspective of the Russian government has failed. Its intelligence, command and control, logistics, tactics, and weaponry.  There are several points to consider. 

First, Russia has lost the vast majority of its front line armour. According to Oryx (which is about as good an estimate as one is going to get), Russia has lost over 2000 main battle tanks, huge numbers of armoured personal carriers, infantry fighting vehicles, and infantry mobility vehicles. It has lost thousands of other vehicles and appears (at times) to be relying on panel vans to move supplies. Its Black Sea fleet has been virtually incapacitated, Ukrainian operatives have illustrated that they can move across the frontier and set fire to oil storage facilities, factories, and other buildings and derail trains. One needs to take social media reports with a grain of salt but there are reports of Russians using shells manufactured in 1939, and obsolete T-54 battle tanks have been reported in the field. What is equally important is that Russian weapons are clearly vulnerable to western weapons. While there is more than enough blame to go around for this, it is evident that simple point-and-fire Western anti-tank weapons appear to be able to incapacitate even the latest Russian armoured vehicles. 

What this amounts to is this: Russia's weaponry has failed on two counts. Russia has now lost massive amounts of heavy weapons. I don't know exactly how long it will take Russia to replace its lost weapons but I would be shocked if this is not a decade long situation even acknowledging that redevelopment is needed as much as replacement. Russia is so low of weapons -- and soldiers -- that bizarre Wagner mutiny was virtually unopposed inside Russia. There was simply nothing to stop them. And, its weapons are just not as good as they were generally thought to be. 

Second, for whatever bizarre reasons, Russia's assessment of the situation in Ukraine was so wrong it is ... stunning. Russia had had considerable success in the post-Soviet era attempting to extend its "sphere of influence." It has done this in a number of ways. Let's not give too much credit to computer manipulation during American elections. Instead, Russia has worked with right wing populists (Hungry, Trump), who are, for their own reasons, favourable to Russia. It has used Wagner mercenaries to prop up and so curry favour in the Middle East and Africa. It has ruthlessly repressed internal dissent, and it has made its level best of separatist movements to carve up Georgia and the Moldova, for instance. There was success in 2014 in taking control of Crimea and part of the Dombas in Ukraine. What was wrong this time was legion. It is almost as if the Russian government assumed that nothing had changed since 2014. Russia underestimated the degree to which the Ukrainians would fight back, the degree to which Ukraine and NATO had effectively retrained Ukraine's military, the degree to which western (and other) countries would rally round Ukraine providing vital support, the potential degree of support of its own allies, let alone Russia's own abilities to conduct an extended mission on foreign territory with limited logistics support. 

Put together, what all of this means is that Russia will emerge from its debacle in Ukraine far weaker than it went in. If the objective of attacking Ukraine was to establish a friendly government, seize or secure resources (particularly but not exclusively in the Dombas), secure military facilities (Crimea), while illustrating the speed and effectiveness of its military ... every possible objective has not only failed so far but has failed completely. Add to this that Russia's supposed allies in central Asia don't seem to want much to do with it -- and must, now, necessarily be considering a potential post-Putin future -- its standard of living has been hit -- and will continue to be -- and hundreds of thousands of Russians are in exile, providing a potential basis for a long-range anti-government opposition. But, it gets worse. Whatever territories Russia has been able to seize are not secure nor are the military basis in the Crimea. They can only be protected -- if they can be -- by an extended and expensive conflict. Said differently, Russia's military basis are less secure than they were, it access to resources have been impeded and cannot be secured, and at least some section of its population has become deeply skeptical of governmental leadership. 

And, we can throw in the kicker. NATO has expanded and the EU will as well. The Russian invasion of Ukraine forced Sweden and Finland off the fence and shifted the centres of authority in NATO to the east. As this conflict moves well into its second year, Poland has emerged as a key player in NATO, while a block of Balkan countries has become a key focus on both the EU and NATO. The addition of Sweden and Finland to NATO will augment this shift.  In other words, if the objective of the invasion was to enhance Russian power, the result has been the exact opposite. The conflict has served to enhance the military and political power of countries hostile (or, now hostile) to Russia. 

The odd thing is, I don't think it needed to be this way. There have already been a number of analysis of what went wrong for Russia, but the big thing that went wrong was the decision making process. Even under the most favourable circumstances, the Russia could have hoped for was to secure more Ukrainian territory losing less of its own soldiers. It would still be embroiled in this scenario. There is a need for a critical analysis of the governmental situation in Russia -- including the balance of various social classes and their connections to specific sections of the economy -- that can highlight the political organization of the state that made possible these kinds of decisions. Russia has been able to maintain its field operations only through fairly drastic means (use of mercenaries, prisoners, foreign workers, and minority groups) as front line soldiers. But, that can't continue for ever. Ukraine's counter offensive is slow but they make gains each day, destroy more Russia equipment each day, and force more drastic measures (such as flooding a vast region to slow down a counter offensive), but each of these movements can only buy time. They can't reverse what has happened. Moreover, Ukraine is now strong enough that it has no reason to leave this conflict "frozen." If that worked in Moldova and Georgia, the relative balance of power will means it won't work here. 

I think, before the invasion, maybe two or three years before, there was room for a solution to the Russia-Ukraine conflict that could have prevented the war. That solution involved each country accepting certain things that it did not want to accept. For instance, Russia needed to abandon separatists in the Dombas. This was always an artificial movement anyway. If Russian-speaking Ukrainians living in that region were concerned about their culture and autonomy within Ukraine political solutions were available. This included some form of bilingualism and local autonomy or semi-federal arrangements. Both sides could have agreed to a demilitarization of the region and separatists needed to disarm. All this could have been possible, if Russia and Russian-speaking separatists were being honest. If they weren't ... well .... I suspect they weren't. 

Crimea could have been much more difficult to address but some kind of condominium status might have worked, monitored by third parties or the UN. Agreements on off shore authority would need to be worked out but, again, all this would have depended on the honesty of those involved.  These kinds of deals don't seem great but they allow Ukraine to avoid costly and destructive war while allowing Russia -- and Russian separatists -- the security for which they claim they were looking. 

In the longer run -- and I suspect this is one of the reasons the current government of Russia would not have been interested in this kind of deal -- Russia would also have to accept Ukraine's borders and accept its sovereignty. This means that it has the right to arm itself and the right to make its own international decisions. Exactly why Russia should be concerned about that, however, is a bit confusing to me and might require the kind of political-economic analysis I noted above. 

I say this because I can't see how a European-oriented Ukraine is, in any way, a threat to Russia. Before the conflict, Russia itself was pretty European oriented. It sold mass amounts of energy to Europe, its elites vacationed in the west and had extensive business interests there. There is also a long-running cultural connection. On some things -- say, opposition to ISIS -- there was even room for common international accord. Complaining about a European-oriented Ukraine seems at best hypocritical so something else must have been going on. 

I might also take the time to say that this conflict is not the fault of the Ukraine, the US, the EU, or the west. Let me pick an example, the idea that Russia has a natural interest in Ukraine and this means that Ukraine does not have the right to select its own system of international relations is a serious backward step in IR. Anyone making it is either a toady or working with some sort of bizarrely backward conceptions of IR. We are not -- and should not be -- in a time where people can say that, say, the US caused the conflict by maintaining a relationship with Ukraine. It did not. The decision to start this conflicts rests solely and exclusively with the Russian leadership and the problems it has created are their responsibility. Because they made such bad decisions, the problems are going to take a long time resolve and will cause tensions, potentially, for decades to come.