The wise man abhors the insane device so that the fruit of his effortsmakes not his own destruction.
Widespread conflagration is closer than it has been in the past half century. The sinews of war extend into tender confines where too many nations crave influence. Once isolated ructions now intertwine in a snarl of martial encounter reflecting a deeper rivalry between two nations. America and Russia eye each other across the precipice of competing interests; they now move toward the bridge of conflict. The rainbows of peace disappear. The sky turns crimson with the promise of blood. This is not how events were supposed to turn but the world rarely does as it ought. It does as it is.
Someone forget to inform the Cold War that it died with the Soviet Union. The current friction between America and Russia proves the Cold War was less a contest of ideologies than a modern version of the classical encounter of strong nations with competing interests. The Soviet Union eventually folded into the recesses of history. From its demise arose an unsure, weak Russia. In due course, Russia would become less unsure and less weak. It would soon remember itself as the nation bestride the Eurasian landmass with bulging designs to influence and return into its orbit those nations cast with the unenviable fate of bordering it.
When the Soviet Union fell, America’s leadership ingested a litany of ideas that seemed self-evident from the Washington perspective. Today, the indiscriminant exercise of those ideas imperil world peace. When historians look back on this period a century or two from now, they will view these concepts as the tradecraft of madmen, a school of lunatic minds to which the foreign policy of the world’s mightiest nation was ceded.
American foreign policy has been reduced to tenets more akin to theology than a rational assessment of strategic interests. American leaders came to depictthemselves as sole guardians and interpreters of international morality. They also were the lone superpower; the nation would fashion its military budget to maintain the vast power differential over all nations, making that superpower status an enduring feature of the global structure. As such, might and right merged into one. America was both the strongest power and highest priest of the international order.
American leaders felt their expressions were the words of supreme reason if not of God himself. They were the sword of peace ready to pass judgment on those who bade not to their righteous dictates.
America would broadly export its political, economic, and military power to reshape the world in its image. Those nations and peoples that adhered to its way would not incur wrath; the cost would be their independence in action and policy. They must bend their national polices to suit American interests then secondarily their own. Those nations that dared follow their own inklings would be placed on the disciplinary list. If they venture too far down the self-minded course, they would be undermined, possibly attacked.
Thus, Iraq and Libya were made to pay in limb and blood for the recalcitrance of their former leaders. Syria has been escorted to the chopping block. Iran remains on the list of the endangered. Afghanistan is a proverb for incessant violence. Forlorn Yemen mimics it. The Middle East has become the site of battle that has more to do with oil and irrational geopolitical competition than with a clash of religions or of Western and Islamic civilizations. There is little civilized about what the actors now do in the name of national interests.
While internally democratic, America implementsits foreign policy with the spirit of a myopic theocracy. It is a well spring of high-sounding principles honored only in their enunciation, not in their implementation. That which is done looks dissimilar for what is said. The word “hypocrisy”ventures to mind.
America says it primary battle is the war against terrorism. Indeed, America abhors the fingerprint of foreign terror inside America. When terror confines itself to distantMiddle East or Africa, American attitudes are more nuanced. Opposition to terrorism becomes conditional; cooperation with it even becomes possible. America may oppose terrorism in the abstract. However, America completely oozes with actionable hostility toward nations that refuse to tow its line. America will align with terrorists to subdue these nations.
America and its allies cooperated with Al Qaeda to steamroll Qaddafi. In addition to devastating Libya, America was purposefully lax in securing Libya’s military armories. It turned the other way as Al Qaeda lay hold of the ample supplies of war materiel. With Western aid, many of these terrorist filibusters with their newly acquired weapons embarked for Syria. Aided by Western indifference, chunks of the weapons cacheswent south via Mali into the hands of Boko Haram. In downing a nonthreatening but stubbornly vociferous Qaddafi, American policy abetted a violent terrorism that spans an arc from the southern banks of Lake Chad, bending through Tripoli to the northern banks of the Tigris in Mesopotamia. To subdue Qaddafi, America was willing that Boko haram would wax stronger and that ISIL would spawn from the chaos that Syria and Iraq had become.
Syria is now the crucial point but not the crucial counterparty. Russia is. Simply because everyone seems to want to put their hand in the matter, Syria is the most dangerous spot in the world today. Because of the roster of state and non-state actors crowding the narrow stage, it is a place where a minor tactical mishap can spiral intowider conflict pitting Russia againstAmerica.
America seeks to ejectAssad simply because they have always sought his ouster. He has been blacklisted for years although he is not a material threat to any interest America would deem vital. At most, he has been merely a visible nuisance of no serious jeopardy except to America’s expectation that no international player should publicly object to its ways and means. To remove him from the list of the condemned would be to implicitly admit error; this would hamstring the aim of recreating the world in their image instead of allowing sovereign nations to evolve as their sovereignty leads them. Like any self-righteous theocracy, America cannot amend its edicts for they consider their strategies as ex cathedra. Inertia becomes anathematic to vision, adaptation and correction. America’s leaders fate themselves to grievous errors because they abhor admitting minor ones.
However, something happened on the road to Damascus. There was no divine revelation this time. There was mortal rivalry. Russia had invested itself heavily in Syria and was not about to allow America to ruin its long-established interests. A key Russian naval base resides there, protecting Russia’s Black Sea portal and projecting Russia into the eastern Mediterranean.
Russia passively watched as America bushwhacked Saddam in Iraq because Moscow had no affection or the Iraqi despot. They watched as America entangled itself in Afghanistan. America’s thrust against Al Qaeda and the Taliban served Russian interests on many levels, including giving Moscow the perverse satisfaction of seeing America fall into the same quagmire that perplexed the Soviet military some thirty years before. The more powerful the nation, the fewer lessons it seems to learn until that power is sorely dissipated by folly.
Russia even watched as America crushed Moscow’sunreliable friend in Libya because Russia had no vital interest involved in the matter. Based on this long string of passive inaction, America badly miscalculated Russian interests and resolve. America tried to pluck Ukraine from Russia’s orbit. That was a step too far. Russia was not going to relinquish this bird in the hand. Russia not only opposed Western designs, it annex the Crimea to secure the northern reaches of the Black Sea and to show it was a master of the geopolitical game when played in its own back yard. The tables had now turned. After embarrassing America and NATO in the Ukraine, Russia again recently outflanked that duo in Syria. By complementing Assad’s ground forces with strong air cover, Russia has annealed the regime and undermined America strategy to topple Assad.
In Eastern Europe and then the Middle East, Russia foiled American foreign policy drives in two successive instances. This affrontsAmerica’s claimed global leadership. It also testifies to the superior logic and validity of traditional balance of power considerations in comparison to American unipolar conceptions. America may be the lone superpower but it is not the only power. When President Obama dismissed Russia a mere “regional power,” he revealed a shocking lack of appreciation for the principles underlying the wise application of geopolitical power. Geographic propinquity has much to do with most things politic. Actual events and crises only occur in a defined geographic space; that space can never be equidistant for all interested parties. As a general rule, the closer the problem, the more likely that problem impinges on a nation’s strategic interests. The more a nation’s objective strategic interest is involved, the more assets and commitment that nation will devote to resolving the matter in its favor.
The obvious power differential between America and Russia is but a portion of the equation. The fuller answer requires an assessment of the two nations’ interests and relative commitment to seeing their policy to fruition, regardless of the costs. In the arena of limited wars, asymmetry in power is often overcome by a countervailing asymmetry in vital interests and firmness of commitment to national cause. America has yet learned this simple truth. Consequently, America calculates that all nations should look in awe at its superior arsenal then bow to whatever it wants, wherever it wants it.
Conversely, Russia more accurately judged in Ukraine and Syria that its interests were such that it could bring more assets to bear because it would more likely walk the hard mile. America, with all of its muscle, would calculate that the risks outstrip the potential reward. It would dip its toe in the water but recoil from getting its entire foot wet. America had more power but lesser interests; thus, it was unwilling to bring that full power to bear, particularly in the Ukraine. Meanwhile, Russia enjoyed inferior power but was more willing to bring a greater percentage of that lesser might to bear in order to win its way.
In war and most forms of human rivalry pitting one aggregation against another such entity, commitment and willpower likely are more decisive than the possession of superior power, particularly when the locus of the confrontation lies closer to the weaker entity than the stronger one. In such instances, the superior power has less interest in the outcome. Thus, it retains most of its power in the bank. By not bringing such power into play, that actor renders its superior muscle impotent as if nonexistent.
This tracks events in Ukraine. Russia was prepared to support the rebels to the hilt. America merely played around the edges. Learning a lesson from Ukraine, Russia felt it might be able to outflank America in Syria if America’s policy errors left such an aperture.
President Obama has temporizes in Syria for years. To his credit, his preternatural caution may be his greatest contribution to world peace during his term as president. He has resisted the call of foreign policy hawks in both parties to engage more intensely in Syria and to confront Russia more aggressively in all places and in all manner of ways.
Many of these hawks pine for war against Russia. By bringing Russia, the world’s second most potent military, under heel America would solidify its position as the lone superpower. It would also send a chilling message to more inferior nations: they best not provoke American ire lest they want to suffer an avalanche of steel and fire. Obama is not such a wanton militarist. Not wanting to get involved in wider military engagement unless the outcome was basically assured, President Obama has been a brake on these aggressive, Prussian designs.
While Barack the Hesitant dallied between war and diplomacy, the Russian leader waited for his opportune moment. When he saw Assad was eroding in what had become a war of attrition, he entered the fray to bolster the beleaguered ally. Putin turned his air force into Assad’s, attacking ISIL and those like ISIL that America backed.
This was a calculated risk, an intrepid move. For the first time, American and Russian military aircraft flew in the same theater of war, fighting in part on the same side (both against ISIL), in part as enemies (one in support, one against Assad). Putin now bombs ISIL and its supply and commercial lines with Turkey with a ferocity absent from the American air strikes. In comparison, American strikes have been recreational, not attempting to hit ISIL where it hurts as that would undermine NATO ally Turkey and also turn Assad into a third party beneficiary of Washington’s aerial might.
Putin wagers that Obama will not try to match Russia’s escalation with an America escalation. Putin believes he has the measure of Obama: that Obama shrinks from the risks attendant togenuine war fought with so many variable factors that the result is less then certain. Add heat and Obama is more likely to sue for diplomacy than roll out his bigger guns. Thus far, Putin has been right but perhaps for the wrong reason.
Although Obama is risk averse, we should give him more credit for being clear-headed than for being chicken-livered. He realizes much could quickly go wrong. In his constellation of important issues, the risk of regional and possible world war over Syria is senseless. He would have to venture the risk if Israel’s existence was being threatened. But Syria is an inferior case. To assume such a risk just to unseat Assad would be the acme of professional negligence. It could shred peace to tatters.
Already too many actors are engaged in Syria. The nation is taking on the attributes of the Balkans before 1914, with more powerful nations seeing important interests in the weak region where no such interests actually attach. The overinflated interests of one power clashed with the real interests of another. One assassination struck the match that set all aflame. WWI erupted in this straitened atmosphere, bringing Western civilization to near collapse.
Barack Obama does not want this insanity on his resume. However, others connive to bring about momentous collision. In shooting down a Russian plane weeks ago, Ankara tried to goad Moscow to retaliate against it. If Moscow had swallowed the bait by responding militarily, Turkey would have invoked the NATO principle that an attack on one is deemed an attack against all. This would have placed the nose of the Russian bear squarely against the American eagle. The world would have taken a colossal stride toward scarlet encounter.
Thank goodness neither Putin nor Obama ran askew at that critical moment. The two leaders could hardly be more dissimilar. Obama is the skittish intellectual conscious about not fouling his singular place in history as America’s first Black president. Putin is the calculating practitioner of realpolitik seeking to etch his name in history by lifting Russia to its former glory as the core of an empire stretching from the Caucasus to the Pacific. While their room for maneuver without losing face is slowly and dangerously narrowing, both have thus far avoided the rash move. In different ways and for different reasons, both are flawed heroes because they represent the last line before peace turns to war. This may not hold.
Both dislike each other; neither can afford to allow that sentiment to define future actions. They must work together as much as they will work apart.Meanwhile, both must fend off hawks in their camps who would like nothing better than to up the ante until the only wager possible is that of war.
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