Ripples And Fallout

No event exists or can exist in a vacuum.  Certainly no event punctuated by the noise of bombs, missiles, and gunfire can be considered to have no implications, no ramifications, no ripples and fallout.  So it is with the Western Answer to the Libyan Question.

If there had ever been any chance of the Six Power Talks resuming, there is none now.  The US led campaign to abate the North Korean nuclear nuisance died with the first Tomahawk hitting some Libyan target.  The view adopted by the Hermits of Pyongyang is simple and direct.  When Gaddafi wimped out in 2003 and abandoned his nuclear and chemical weapons research and development efforts, he placed himself at the mercy of the West. How merciful the West is can be seen through the dust and flames of the incoming missiles.

This North Korean understanding echoes the earlier contention in Pyongyang that the instant the Soviet Union dropped out of the arms race, gasping and retching with exhaustion, it was lost.  The loss of the nuclear option assured that the Cold War would be ended to the advantage of the US.  The Hermits took a similar position regarding Saddam Hussein.  His decision to allow UN inspectors roam Iraq in search of prohibited nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, Pyongyang has animadverted, led inexorably to the American invasion and Saddam's fall.

The big QED is self-evident.  As long as North Korea has a nuclear capacity, even a very rudimentary one, it will be safe.  Lose that capacity and all is over.  The security of the North and its peculiar form of government can last only so long as it keeps stonewalling any and all attempts to end its nuclear program.  Or, to be accurate, all other programs oriented to obtaining and expanding the arsenal of weapons capable of mass destruction and associated delivery systems.

Anyone who believes that the logic tree in Tehran is different from that in Pyongyang is capable of buying the Golden Gate Bridge on EBay.  The mullahs have long pointed to Pakistan as the prime example of just how having a nuclear capability provided an impressive measure of both immunity and ability to extort.

So, the first major bit of fallout from Operation Odyssey Dawn is this: Nuclear weapons do make a country safe.  One must wonder if this easily foreseeable ramification was considered by The Nice Young Man From Chicago and the Three Weird Sisters who counseled him with such dramatic effect.

The partisans of consistency in American foreign policy have been wondering just when will the US and the rest of the "international community" do a Libya on Syria.  Senator Joe Leiberman has reportedly called for a no-fly zone over Syria if Bashir Assad employs the "same tactics" as did Gaddafi in Libya.  The senator invoked the Libyan "precedent" explicitly as he referenced the lethal means used already by Syrian security and military units.

Leiberman did not mention Hama.  He should have.  It would have made his case more convincing.  Bashir's father turned the Syrian army loose in that city back in 1982 after the Muslim Brotherhood raised the flag of rebellion.  At the least ten thousand people died under rocket, artillery, and air delivered fire.  The death toll might have been an order of magnitude greater.  In Syria, particularly among the aging "old guard" of the Syrian Baathist party, Hama constitutes precedent.  More than the omnipresent security services, the collective memory of Hama is the fear factor which has inhibited popular unrest until the past few days.

A couple of ground truths reinforce the trenchancy of the Hama precedent.  The first is the firm grip the old guard has on the military and security services of Syria as well as its demonstrated ability to inhibit the reformist tendencies of Bashir these past several years.  The second and more important governing reality is that Bashir and all the rest of the power elite in Syria are Alawites. The Alawites are a despised minority perceived by the majority Sunni population, particularly by hardliners such as the Muslim Brotherhood, as apostates deserving of death--death, not the power and preeminence they have enjoyed for more than sixty years now.  This means the current government and its adherents have nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, no safe haven should the levers of power slip from their grasp.

For Bashir and the rest, Syria is their Alamo.  They can neither expect nor give quarter.  Any internal dissent, any incipient rebellion, is existential from the perspective of the Alawite ruling structure.

With so much at stake, the Hama precedent must govern.  That is the essential starting point for any evaluation of US policy regarding the internal dynamics of Syria.  Bashir and the Baathists will do whatever is necessary to survive, to maintain power.  If that means piling corpses higher and higher, it will be done.

Hilary Clinton in a TV interview belabored the obvious with regard to Syria.  She averred that every country in the Mideast is different.  Duh?  Gosh, you don't say?

Syria certainly isn't Libya.  Syria is far from isolated.  While Gaddafi could count on the unstinting support of Hugo Chavez (so can Bashir, whom Hugo called a "brother" and a "humanitarian",) the Syrian leader can rely upon the support and assistance of Iran, Hezbollah, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, and probably Saudi Arabia.  This means the current regime can gain access to money, diplomatic assistance, and even personnel from these countries.

Nor has Syria gone out of its way to alienate European and other states.  It has good to very good diplomatic and economic relations throughout most of the West.  It is not seen in other, lesser developed regions as a potential troublemaker, backer of coups, supporter of local terror groups, meddler in local politics.  This is quite unlike the situation in which Libya--or more properly, Gaddafi personally--placed itself.  This implies that even with a reenactment of Hama, the degree of official international condemnation would be lessened greatly.

Nor, in the event the balloon goes up in Syria is it at all probable that the mild mannered and soft-spoken Bashir would go on television ranting about how he would crush the rebels "without mercy" or go way over the line of sanity with wild accusations concerning drug use, or the involvement of al-Qaeda and the CIA.  The Syrian leader is constitutionally incapable of presenting himself as a Gaddafi style nutjob.  This coupled with the inevitable media (including Internet) blackout would make the task of overlooking any repetition of Hama relatively easy for any government so inclined.

Syria has a far more well equipped and trained military than did Libya.  It has a far more up to date air defense system.  In short, it would not be so easy a nut to hammer.  And, quite unlike Libya, any attack on Syria, even one approved of by the Arab League and UN Security Council (impossible as that hypothetical might be), would result in a response by Hezbollah and Hamas directed against Israel.  Any effort to impose a no-fly zone would touch off the next Arab-Israeli war.

Now, that, bucko, is a very unpleasant thought.  One which underscores just how far from Libya on the spectrum of doable targets one finds Syria.

Anyway the tofu is sliced, the result is the same: Libya is not a precedent as regards Syria.  If the current regime needs to kill a few score or a few thousand score of its citizens to maintain the political status quo, it will be done.  And, R2P to the contrary notwithstanding, the "international community" will do nothing beyond issue boiler plate denunciations and impose a few meaningless sanctions.  Well, if really motivated, there may be a move to refer the matter to the International Criminal Court, an action which would not simply be without meaning but would have the counterproductive effect of undercutting the notion of "accountability" for crimes against humanity.

There are other ripples sloshing around.  None are particularly positive as regards the international puissance of the West generally or the US in particular.  One of these is the highlighting of political divisions within the European states as well as between some of those and the US.  Another is a further underscoring of the adrift-at-the-policy-level approach to international affairs which characterizes the Obama administration.  Yet one more is the ease with which the Western public, and the American in particular, can delude itself about potential future developments in critical countries if the magic totem word, "democracy" is uttered often and loudly enough.

Bad as those might be, there is one ripple which is a tsunami in comparison.  The Libyan Question and the Wstern answer to it has demonstrated that the US and others have not learned a thing from the messes in both Iraq and Afghanistan.  What this means is simple.  We have not yet learned the crucial nature of answering the "what next?" question before taking the first action--a first action which will always, but always necessitate a second and a third and so on.

In the game of global chess, the US and the others have once more shown they are fine trumpet players--loud but irrelevant to the needs of reality.