Israel's Secret Staging Ground

U.S. officials believe that the Israelis have gained access to airbases in Azerbaijan. Does this bring them one step closer to a war with Iran?

BY MARK PERRY

                                                                         Israeli President Shimon Perez in Azerbaijan

In 2009, the deputy chief of mission of the U.S. embassy in Baku, Donald Lu, sent a cable to the State Department's headquarters in Foggy Bottom titled "Azerbaijan's discreet symbiosis with Israel." The memo, later released by WikiLeaks, quotes Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev as describing his country's relationship with the Jewish state as an iceberg: "nine-tenths of it is below the surface."

Why does it matter? Because Azerbaijan is strategically located on Iran's northern border and, according to several high-level sources I've spoken with inside the U.S. government, Obama administration officials now believe that the "submerged" aspect of the Israeli-Azerbaijani alliance -- the security cooperation between the two countries -- is heightening the risks of an Israeli strike on Iran.

In particular, four senior diplomats and military intelligence officers say that the United States has concluded that Israel has recently been granted access to airbases on Iran's northern border. To do what, exactly, is not clear. "The Israelis have bought an airfield," a senior administration official told me in early February, "and the airfield is called Azerbaijan."

Senior U.S. intelligence officials are increasingly concerned that Israel's military expansion into Azerbaijan complicates U.S. efforts to dampen Israeli-Iranian tensions, according to the sources. Military planners, I was told, must now plan not only for a war scenario that includes the Persian Gulf -- but one that could include the Caucasus. The burgeoning Israel-Azerbaijan relationship has also become a flashpoint in both countries' relationship with Turkey, a regional heavyweight that fears the economic and political fallout of a war with Iran. Turkey's most senior government officials have raised their concerns with their U.S. counterparts, as well as with the Azeris, the sources said.

The Israeli embassy in Washington, the Israel Defense Forces, and the Mossad, Israel's national intelligence agency, were all contacted for comment on this story but did not respond.

The Azeri embassy to the United States also did not respond to requests for information regarding Azerbaijan's security agreements with Israel. During a recent visit to Tehran, however, Azerbaijan's defense minister publicly ruled out the use of Azerbaijan for a strike on Iran. "The Republic of Azerbaijan, like always in the past, will never permit any country to take advantage of its land, or air, against the Islamic Republic of Iran, which we consider our brother and friend country," he said. (Following the publication of this article, an Azeri spokesman denied that his government had granted Israel access to Azeri airbases.)

But even if his government makes good on that promise, it could still provide Israel with essential support. A U.S. military intelligence officer noted that Azeri defense minister did not explicitly bar Israeli bombers from landing in the country after a strike. Nor did he rule out the basing of Israeli search-and-rescue units in the country. Proffering such landing rights -- and mounting search and rescue operations closer to Iran -- would make an Israeli attack on Iran easier.

"We're watching what Iran does closely," one of the U.S. sources, an intelligence officer engaged in assessing the ramifications of a prospective Israeli attack confirmed. "But we're now watching what Israel is doing in Azerbaijan. And we're not happy about it."

Israel's deepening relationship with the Baku government was cemented in February by a $1.6 billion arms agreement that provides Azerbaijan with sophisticated drones and missile-defense systems. At the same time, Baku's ties with Tehran have frayed: Iran presented a note to Azerbaijan's ambassador last month claiming that Baku has supported Israeli-trained assassination squads targeting Iranian scientists, an accusation the Azeri government called "a slander." In February, a member of Yeni Azerbadzhan -- the ruling party -- called on the government to change the country's name to "North Azerbaijan," implicitly suggesting that the 16 million Azeris who live in northern Iran ("South Azerbaijan") are in need of liberation.

And this month, Baku announced that 22 people had been arrested for spying on behalf of Iran, charging they had been tasked by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to "commit terrorist acts against the U.S., Israeli, and other Western states' embassies." The allegations prompted multiple angry denials from the Iranian government.

It's clear why the Israelis prize their ties to Azerbaijan -- and why the Iranians are infuriated by them. The Azeri military has four abandoned, Soviet-era airfields that would potentially be available to the Israelis, as well as four airbases for their own aircraft, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies' Military Balance 2011.

The U.S. intelligence and diplomatic officials told me they believe that Israel has gained access to these airbases through a series of quiet political and military understandings. "I doubt that there's actually anything in writing," added a senior retired American diplomat who spent his career in the region. "But I don't think there's any doubt -- if Israeli jets want to land in Azerbaijan after an attack, they'd probably be allowed to do so. Israel is deeply embedded in Azerbaijan, and has been for the last two decades."

The prospect of Israel using Azerbaijan's airfields for an Iranian attack first became public in December 2006, when retired Israeli Brig. Gen. Oded Tira angrily denounced the George W. Bush administration's lack of action on the Iranian nuclear program. "For our part," he wrote in a widely cited commentary, "we should also coordinate with Azerbaijan the use of airbases in its territory and also enlist the support of the Azeri minority in Iran." The "coordination" that Tira spoke of is now a reality, the U.S. sources told me.

Access to such airfields is important for Israel, because it would mean that Israeli F-15I and F-16I fighter-bombers would not have to refuel midflight during a strike on Iran's nuclear facilities, but could simply continue north and land in Azerbaijan. Defense analyst David Isenberg describes the ability to use Azeri airfields as "a significant asset" to any Israel strike, calculating that the 2,200-mile trip from Israel to Iran and back again would stretch Israel's warplanes to their limits. "Even if they added extra fuel tanks, they'd be running on fumes," Isenberg told me, "so being allowed access to Azeri airfields would be crucial."

Former CENTCOM commander Gen. Joe Hoar simplified Israel's calculations: "They save themselves 800 miles of fuel," he told me in a recent telephone interview. "That doesn't guarantee that Israel will attack Iran, but it certainly makes it more doable."

Using airbases in Azerbaijan would ensure that Israel would not have to rely on its modest fleet of air refuelers or on its refueling expertise, which a senior U.S. military intelligence officer described as "pretty minimal." Military planners have monitored Israeli refueling exercises, he added, and are not impressed. "They're just not very good at it."

Retired Air Force Col. Sam Gardiner, who conducted a study for a think tank affiliated with the Swedish Ministry of Defense of likely Israeli attack scenarios in March 2010, said that Israel is capable of using its fleet of F-15I and F-16I warplanes in a strike on Iran without refueling after the initial top-off over Israel. "It's not weight that's a problem," he said, "but the numbers of weapons that are mounted on each aircraft." Put simply, the more distance a fighter-bomber is required to travel, the more fuel it will need and the fewer weapons it can carry. Shortening the distance adds firepower, and enhances the chances for a successful strike.

"The problem is the F-15s," Gardiner said, "who would go in as fighters to protect the F-16 bombers and stay over the target." In the likely event that Iran scrambled its fighters to intercept the Israeli jets, he continued, the F-15s would be used to engage them. "Those F-15s would burn up fuel over the target, and would need to land."

Could they land in Azerbaijan? "Well, it would have to be low profile, because of political sensitivities, so that means it would have to be outside of Baku and it would have to be highly developed." Azerbaijan has such a place: the Sitalcay airstrip, which is located just over 40 miles northwest of Baku and 340 miles from the Iranian border. Prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union, Sitalcay's two tarmacs and the adjacent facilities were used by a squadron of Soviet Sukhoi SU-25 jets -- perfect for Israeli fighters and bombers.  "Well then," Gardiner said, after the site was described to him, "that would be the place."

Even if Israeli jets did not land in Azerbaijan, access to Azeri airfields holds a number of advantages for the Israel Defense Forces. The airfields not only have facilities to service fighter-bombers, but a senior U.S. military intelligence officer said that Israel would likely base helicopter rescue units there in the days just prior to a strike for possible search and rescue missions.

This officer pointed to a July 2010 joint Israeli-Romanian exercise that tested Israeli air capabilities in mountainous areas -- like those the Israeli Air Force would face during a bombing mission against Iranian nuclear facilities that the Iranians have buried deep into mountainsides. U.S. military officers watched the exercises closely, not least because they objected to the large number of Israeli fighters operating from airbases of a NATO-member country, but also because 100 Israeli fighters overflew Greece as a part of a simulation of an attack on Iran. The Israelis eventually curtailed their Romanian military activities when the United States expressed discomfort with practicing the bombing of Iran from a NATO country, according to this senior military intelligence officer.

This same senior U.S. military intelligence officer speculated that the search and rescue component of those operations will be transferred to Azerbaijan -- "if they haven't been already." He added that Israel could also use Azerbaijan as a base for Israeli drones, either as part of a follow-on attack against Iran, or to mount aerial assessment missions in an attack's aftermath.

Azerbaijan clearly profits from its deepening relationship with Israel. The Jewish state is the second largest customer for Azeri oil - shipped through the Baku-Tibilisi-Ceyhan pipeline -- and its military trade allows Azerbaijan to upgrade its military after the Organization for Cooperation and Security in Europe (OSCE) slapped it with an arms embargo after its six-year undeclared war with Armenia over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region. Finally, modernizing the Azeri military sends a clear signal to Iran that interference in Azerbaijan could be costly.

"Azerbaijan has worries of its own," said Alexander Murinson, an Israeli-American scholar who wrote in an influential monograph on Israeli-Azeri ties for Tel Aviv's Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies. "The Baku government has expelled Iranians preaching in their mosques, broken up pro-Iranian terrorist groups, and countered Iranian propaganda efforts among its population."

The deepening Azeri-Israeli relationship has also escalated Israel's dispute with Turkey, which began when Israeli commandos boarded a Turkish ship destined for Gaza in May 2010, killing nine Turkish citizens. When Turkey demanded an apology, Israel not only refused, it abruptly canceled a $150 million contract to develop and manufacture drones with the Turkish military -- then entered negotiations with Azerbaijan to jointly manufacture 60 Israeli drones of varying types. The $1.6 billion arms agreement between Israel and Azerbaijan also left Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan "sputtering in rage," according to a retired U.S. diplomat.

The centerpiece of the recent arms deal is Azerbaijan's acquisition of Israeli drones, which has only heightened Turkish anxieties further. In November 2011, the Turkish government retrieved the wreckage of an Israeli "Heron" drone in the Mediterranean, south of the city of Adana -- well inside its maritime borders. Erdogan's government believed the drone's flight had originated in the Kurdish areas of northern Iraq and demanded that Israel provide an explanation, but got none. "They lied; they told us the drone didn't belong to them," a former Turkish official told me last month. "But it had their markings."

Israel began cultivating strong relations with Baku in 1994, when Israeli telecommunications firm Bezeq bought a large share of the nationally controlled telephone operating system. By 1995, Azerbaijan's marketplace was awash with Israeli goods: "Strauss ice cream, cell phones produced by Motorola's Israeli division, Maccabee beer, and other Israeli imports are ubiquitous," an Israeli reporter wrote in the Jerusalem Post.

In March 1996, then-Health Minister Ephraim Sneh became the first senior Israeli official to visit Baku -- but not the last. Benjamin Netanyahu made the trip in 1997, a high-level Knesset delegation in 1998, Deputy Prime Minister Avigdor Lieberman and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni in 2007, Israeli President Shimon Peres in 2009, and Lieberman again, as foreign minister, this last February. Accompanying Peres on his visit to Baku was Avi Leumi, the CEO of Israel's Aeronautics Defense Systems and a former Mossad official who paved the way for the drone agreement.

U.S. intelligence officials began to take Israel's courtship of Azerbaijan seriously in 2001, one of the senior U.S. military intelligence officers said. In 2001, Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit Systems contracted with Georgia's Tbilisi Aerospace Manufacturing to upgrade the Soviet SU-25 Scorpion, a close air-support fighter, and one of its first customers was Azerbaijan. More recently, Israel's Elta Systems has cooperated with Azerbaijan in building the TecSar reconnaissance satellite system and, in 2009, the two countries began negotiations over Azeri production of the Namer infantry fighting vehicle.

Israeli firms "built and guard the fence around Baku's international airport, monitor and help protect Azerbaijan's energy infrastructure, and even provide security for Azerbaijan's president on foreign visits," according to a study published by Ilya Bourtman in the Middle East Journal. Bourtman noted that Azerbaijan shares intelligence data on Iran with Israel, while Murinson raised the possibility that Israelis have set up electronic listening stations along Azerbaijan's Iranian border.

Israeli officials downplay their military cooperation with Baku, pointing out that Azerbaijan is one of the few Muslim nations that makes Israelis feel welcome. "I think that in the Caucasian region, Azerbaijan is an icon of progress and modernity," Sneh told an Azeri magazine in July 2010.

Many would beg to differ with that description. Sneh's claim "is laughable," the retired American diplomat said. "Azerbaijan is a thuggish family-run kleptocracy and one of the most corrupt regimes in the world." The U.S. embassy in Baku has also been scathing: A 2009 State Department cable described Aliyev, the son of the country's longtime ruler and former KGB general Heydar Aliyev, as a "mafia-like" figure, comparable to "Godfather" characters Sonny and Michael Corleone. On domestic issues in particular, the cable warned that Aliyev's policies had become "increasingly authoritarian and hostile to diversity of political views."

But the U.S. military is less concerned with Israel's business interests in Baku, which are well-known, than it is with how and if Israel will employ its influence in Azerbaijan, should its leaders decide to strike Iran's nuclear facilities. The cable goes on to confirm that Israel is focused on Azerbaijan as a military ally -- "Israel's main goal is to preserve Azerbaijan as an ally against Iran, a platform for reconnaissance of that country and as a market for military hardware."

It is precisely what is not known about the relationship that keeps U.S. military planners up at night. One former CIA analyst doubted that Israel will launch an attack from Azerbaijan, describing it as "just too chancy, politically." However, he didn't rule out Israel's use of Azeri airfields to mount what he calls "follow-on or recovery operations." He then added: "Of course, if they do that, it widens the conflict, and complicates it. It's extremely dangerous."

One of the senior U.S. military officers familiar with U.S. war plans is not as circumspect. "We are studying every option, every variable, and every factor in a possible Israeli strike," he told me. Does that include Israel's use of Azerbaijan as a platform from which to launch a strike -- or to recover Israeli aircraft following one? There was only a moment's hesitation. "I think I've answered the question," he said.

-This commentary was published in Foreign Policy on 28/03/2012
-Mark Perry is an author and historian. His latest book is Talking to Terrorists

Arab States Redraw The Map Of Alliances After Revolutions

By Jamal Khashoggi

                                                            Arab Summit in Baghdad

While Syria's army cruelly and stupidly shells its own people and storms its cities, the so-called "axis of resistance" stretching from Tehran to Damascus is falling apart. Said axis spent the last decade waging a cold war against the "bloc of moderates" led by Saudi Arabia and Egypt in partnership with Jordan, the UAE and Morocco.

Prior to that divide, Arab leaders forged all sorts of axes and alliances. Some survived and evolved, others fell by the wayside. Positions changed, plots hatched and even blood was spilt during the process.

Are Arabs predestined to leave one axis and enter another, or is that something of the past?

The year 2011 brought down a curtain on an old Arab era. A new one is still taking shape. The maps are many and their lines are yet to be defined. What has transpired so far breaks up Arabs into three groups.

There are the stable countries that withstood the spring of radical change but welcomed reform. This group includes Saudi Arabia and its Gulf partners.

The Arab Spring countries - namely Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen and, certainly before long, Syria - are undergoing political, social and economic revolutions encompassing their ruling elites and the basic nature of their regimes.

The countries of constitutional reform are Morocco and Jordan, where the regimes remain in place but evolve and allow new ruling elites to work their way into power without usurping it. By a stretch of the imagination, Kuwait and Bahrain could be included in this group.

On the touchline are: Algeria, which has every reason to be in the second group; Lebanon, where political change hinges on the outcome in Syria; and Iraq, which would need a mystic to read its future.

Should new alliances and axes emerge, they would not conform to the outdated map, but to the wishes of new ruling elites, to geopolitical realities and, primarily, to economic considerations as politics and ideologies fade along with the dim-witted quest for "leadership" of the Arab world.

In the old Arab era, state-building was a new experience. Maps and borders had yet to become permanent, and infighting among the grandees was natural. Then came the military coups and international interference.

Chances for agreement are greater in this new era - except that past experience shows that Arabs prefer to take the wrong turn. So, better to expect the worst if we want to avoid it.

The most probable confrontation would pit the Muslim Brotherhood axis against the axis of stability. People are already inciting this with speculation about the Muslim Brotherhoods' aspirations to topple regimes in the stable states, and that their new-found power in the Arab Spring states has emboldened their counterparts in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the Gulf to move against their governments, making confrontation inevitable.

But I wonder: does an axis of Muslim Brothers exist?

Such an axis could be visualised running from Egypt to Libya and on to Tunisia, bypassing Algeria (for now), and reaching Morocco. Also included would be Sudan, which is governed by Islamists who must be so relieved to see their counterparts govern Egypt.

To the east, there is Hamas in Gaza on the one hand, and Syria's opposition on the other. And the axis would not be complete without Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party in Turkey.

This is hypothetically correct, but partners in a Muslim Brotherhood alliance are unlikely, at least for now, to agree on common foreign or economic policies. They are not of the same fabric, although the common denominator is "political Islam".

Tunisia's Ennahda Party is unlike Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, for example, with intellectual and organisational variations in each of the movements that will take years to settle. They are all making their way through uncharted territory, getting to know one another after being underground for decades.

Years of incarceration, exile and adverse circumstances tore the various Brotherhood organisations from their original shared platform. This is especially true of Morocco and Sudan's "Brothers" who refuse the label. Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Kuwait's "Brothers" are perhaps the most committed to the old school.

But each of these countries belongs to an alliance other than the "Muslim Brotherhood axis".

That's why talk of a Muslim Brotherhood axis to challenge other partnerships is off the mark. Arab states are interdependent in so many respects that it is unthinkable to see them split into two blocs.

Saudi Arabia and Egypt see eye to eye by virtue of a long-standing strategic commitment to cooperation. The Nile partnership drives Egypt and Sudan together, without the latter distancing itself from Saudi Arabia. The Maghreb identity of Libya, Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria keeps them together. Here, too, I see Morocco remaining close to Saudi Arabia and Jordan, and with Free Syria and Lebanon.

Note how many interconnected circles can be drawn.

The idea of axes is dead because the reasons for accord are innumerable. The "Brothers" neither wish to nor can meddle in the affairs of the stable counties. They will certainly not line up with Iran after its sectarian support of Syria.

Saudi Arabia, in turn, does not look for a confrontation with the Brotherhood, but for collaboration. Proof came when it received Tunisia's Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali, who neatly sidestepped the question of the kingdom's asylum granted to former president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. Mr Jebali focused instead on economic matters, choosing to meet businessmen at every opportunity during his stay, prompting Crown Prince Nayef to advise Saudi business leaders to invest in Tunisia.

The same template seen in Saudi-Tunisian relations will surely reinforce the Gulf's bonds with Egypt, whoever rules it.

-This commentary was published in The National on 30/03/2012
-Jamal Khashoggi is editor-in-chief of the planned Al-Arab news channel

What It Takes To Be A Great American Secretary Of State

(And why we can't have one in the Obama administration.)

BY AARON DAVID MILLER

                                                     U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton

First, full disclosure: I really admire Hillary Clinton.

I was never an FOB or an FOH* in the political sense of the term, though I did work for her husband, whom I also like. In 2000, while at the U.S. State Department, I had the privilege of accompanying her to the funeral of Leah Rabin, the wife of former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

Then, as now, she struck me as a smart, charismatic leader, a quick study with a strong sense of humor and of the absurd -- both very useful when working on foreign-policy basket cases where chances of solutions are slim to none. The Clintonites can shoot me if they want, but Clinton isn't going to end up in the Secretary of State Hall of Fame.

You might conclude otherwise, given the tsunami of favorable media coverage she has received, particularly from the traveling press corps. But that's not unusual. Alone among the cabinet secretaries, America's top diplomat traditionally already wears a nonpartisan halo, whether her name is Albright or Rice.

Still, what the media haven't done is to ask some of the tough questions about what makes a truly consequential secretary of state. Nor has the press (or the punditocracy, for that matter) been able to establish any standard against which her performance might be measured.

My take on her performance -- midway through what is likely to be her last year in the job -- has little to do with her own abilities, which are impressive.

What shapes Clinton's performance more are the two unfriendly universes in which she operates: the cruel world beyond America's shores and the bureaucratically skewed one back home. Throw in her own innate caution when it comes to taking on some of the hopeless issues of the day (see the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Iran), and what you have is a very hardworking and smart media superstar who fights for her department at home and shines abroad on several key 21st-century issues that she has identified as critical, but has yet to put any major points on the board. The Twitter summary of Clinton's legacy would read: No spectacular failures, but no spectacular achievements either. A John Quincy Adams, George Marshall, Dean Acheson, Henry Kissinger, or James Baker she's not.

Over the years, I've thought a great deal about what is required to be a truly effective, consequential, even great secretary of state. The position is a unique one. It's the second-best job in Washington and carries a status no other cabinet position holds, period.

Part of the halo effect is that the job is supposed to be apolitical, like the country's foreign policy itself. When it comes to foreign policy, politics is supposed to stop at the water's edge. And Americans like to believe, somewhat naively, that the country's top diplomat is immune or somehow protected from the seamier aspects of Washington's partisan swamp. Secretaries of state are expected to rise above the fray, and they generally try to. This is one reason their public image and favorability ratings tend to be so high.

Still, in the history of the Republic, only two secretaries of state have resigned over reasons of high principle -- William Jennings Bryan and Cyrus Vance. The job -- like so much of America's high politics -- is filled by survivors, not martyrs. Tending to the country's foreign policy is a tough assignment, one that requires a combination of skill and luck to succeed.

The latter is particularly important. If crisis opens the door to greatness in the presidency, it does the same for the country's top diplomat. Had there been no Civil War, Theodore Roosevelt lamented about his own missing great moment, no one would have known Abraham Lincoln's name. Without the right kind of crisis abroad, no matter how talented the secretary of state, there's no chance to demonstrate his or her stuff.

So what makes a great secretary of state? Fortuna is necessary, but not sufficient for top-level performance. Three other elements are required too.

1. The president must have your back.

All presidents support their secretaries of state, but not all get the kind of support critical to success. Baker used to say that he was George H.W. Bush's man at the State Department, not the State Department's man at the White House. Those two were particularly close, and it gave Baker real authority, power, and street credibility. Kissinger and Richard Nixon, on the other hand, were more competitive, though each exploited the other's talent and authority to command and marshal respect and power.

If there's daylight between the two or if it's clear that the White House isn't really empowering the secretary to take on the important issues of the day, the latter's status is diminished. The president not only needs to tell the world that his secretary of state is a trusted confidante, but he also needs to demonstrate it. If a president doesn't charge the secretary with responsibility for tackling the biggest challenges, how does he or she become truly important?

2. Anatomy really is destiny.

Freud was talking about gender differences here. But the capacity to project a physical presence and persona is critical to success in politics and foreign policy. And that persona, F. Scott Fitzgerald held, flowed from an unbroken series of gestures. Effective presidents and secretaries of state are actors on a public stage; they require charm, flattery, toughness, and drama to make allies and adversaries take them seriously, particularly in a negotiation or crisis.

That means playing any number of roles, sometimes with high gestures of real or feigned anger, frustration, or disappointment. During the 1948 Senate hearings on the plan for European recovery that would bear his name, Marshall, whom columnist James Reston described that day as displaying legendary "moral grandeur," silenced an interrupting senator with a single glare. Kissinger threatened to walk out on Syria's Hafez al-Assad at least once; Baker did the same with Assad, the Palestinians, and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir.

3. The negotiator's mindset.

Beavers build dams, and teenagers talk on the phone and text. By definition, effective secretaries of state work negotiations, defuse crises, and tackle issues that normal human beings consider very hard. A coherent worldview is important too, but not as critical as the instinctive capacity to know how to make a deal, sense the opportunity, and then figure out how to close it.

Kissinger may have been the grand strategist, but both he and Baker had the negotiator's mindset, the ability to figure out how to assemble the pieces of the puzzle strewn on the living room floor and stay even when all the pieces didn't quite fit. Kissinger's Middle East diplomacy -- three disengagement agreements following the October 1973 war -- is a remarkable testament to those skills: The one between Israel and Syria still survives, while the other two, between Egypt and Israel, evolved into a peace treaty. There's no school at which to learn these kinds of things. Marshall was a military man; Kissinger an academic; Baker a lawyer. All possessed a natural ability to gauge how to move the pieces around on the board.

Almost four years in, Hillary Clinton is undeniably one for three.

She clearly has star power -- a Gallup poll last year had Clinton at an approval rating of 66 percent, more popular than the president and the vice president and better regarded than she herself has been at any time since 1993. And in terms of raw ability, she has the smarts and work ethic to do the job.

We know Clinton is talented. What we don't know is how she'd do in a sustained negotiation or in coordinating and orchestrating a grander political and military design. Her capacity in that regard has never really been tested, and likely won't be: You can't be a John Quincy Adams negotiating a historic treaty with Spain, a Dean Acheson orchestrating the Truman Doctrine, or a George Marshall doing NATO unless Fortuna and your boss let you.

What about her relationship with the president? Political rivals turned compatriots can make for close bonds -- think Rabin and Shimon Peres. Frenemies? Perhaps there's a great respect between the two born of political combat and now from the common challenge of making America's foreign policy work.

But by either circumstance or design, her relationship with President Barack Obama doesn't seem to have produced real empowerment. Sure, they may have lunch together each week and she has a chance to weigh in on key decisions, but he hasn't allowed her to own the high-profile issues. And ownership is critical to at least having a chance to do big things.

This doesn't mean she lacks accomplishments. She has fought hard and succeeded in acquiring resources for the State Department; used her star power to improve America's image abroad; sharpened America's response to the Libyan crisis; focused on development, technology, and the environment in a way few of her predecessors have; and highlighted the urgency of women's issues from one end of the planet to the other. That she's had no legacy achievements is less her doing than the result of two self-reinforcing realities.

First, in this administration, power on domestic policy and foreign policy is lodged in the White House. Many key issues (and the strategic policies that shape them), from Iran to Afghanistan to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, are reposited there, the president's various envoys and czars notwithstanding.

The irony really is quite striking. Here's a president who inherited the worst economic crisis since the 1930s. You might have thought he'd be only too happy to delegate some of the big issues to his secretary of state. This hasn't happened; the White House controls everything of real consequence. Indeed, whoever gets the job when Clinton leaves should take notice: This president doesn't let go, at least on foreign policy.

Second, one reason for the absence of ownership is the changing nature of the world Clinton inherited. The reality is that there haven't been all that many good chances for successful diplomacy. The conflicts where U.S. diplomacy might actually bridge gaps between conflicting parties -- always rare -- are tough to identify. There are plenty of crises, but are any really amenable to effective diplomacy?

I know the rap that effective secretaries create their own opportunities. But negotiating with the mullahcracy in Iran on the nuclear issue? Going for broke with Mahmoud Abbas and Benjamin Netanyahu on the Israeli-Palestinian issue? Building nations in Iraq and Afghanistan by sorting out differences between Sunnis, Kurds, and Shiites? Let's get real.

The fact that Obama inherited the two longest wars in U.S. history also gives the Pentagon an outsized role in his foreign policy. The State Department is of course deeply involved in the political dimensions of these issues. But abroad the military quite appropriately runs these wars, and at home, because of the stakes in American lives and money, the White House controls and coordinates high policy.

Finally, there's the secretary's own caution.

Clinton was a star even before becoming secretary of state; she had little to prove. Ditto for Colin Powell. That kind of fame also makes you less hungry and less eager to take risks.

Maybe it's also just smart political instincts. I suspect that when Clinton looks around the world these days, she concludes that all these high-level issues she doesn't own are really a dog's lunch; they are opportunities all right -- for failure. Sometimes getting out of the way of history is better than getting run over by it. And knowing what you can't do is as important as figuring out what you can.

Perhaps Clinton is a secretary of state well suited for her times. She has faithfully carried out the president's policies and reinforced the balance he's trying to strike: how to lead a world in which America has to be much more discerning and disciplined about where and how it projects its power. To the extent Obama is succeeding in this enterprise, she is too. And whatever the future holds for her, she'll be remembered as a pretty competent secretary of state.

So what if Hillary Clinton doesn't get admitted into the Foggy Bottom Hall of Fame. James Buchanan didn't either, and he was the last secretary of state to become president. But who's thinking about that?

*FOB or FOH (Friend of Bill or Friend of Hillary)
-This commentary was published in Foreign Policy on 28/03/2012
-Aaron David Miller is a distinguished scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. His new book, Can America Have Another Great President?, will be published this year

Syria: Descending Into Civil War

By Walden Bello

The sound of what seems like thunder wakes me up at 3 am, Monday, a few hours after I arrived in Damascus. Storm coming, I think, and my jetlagged brain plunges back to sleep.

When I go down to jog at six, the side streets around the Hotel Arjaan are blocked off by burly security men who tell me I can only run in the hotel grounds.  I am not about to argue with guys with Kalashnikovs, and I begin to sense that their presence has something to do with what woke me up hours earlier. Only when the Philippine Embassy car picks me up at 930 a.m. do I get the real story from our diplomatic staff. The sound of thunder was the explosion of a rocket-propelled grenade that killed eight alleged terrorists in a building just two blocks away from my hotel and about three blocks from the Philippine embassy here in West Mezzeh, which is also known as the diplomatic quarters.

The gunfight between government forces and “Afghan nationals,” as the government-controlled media described them, lasted six hours. Like the two massive explosions on Sunday, a few hours before I arrived in the Syrian capital, it was a grim announcement that the rebellion against the regime had arrived in the capital in earnest. Those blasts destroyed two government buildings that had been considered highly secure in the center of the capital, killing 27 people and wounded about a hundred.

Homs: Shattered City

The next day I travel to the city that has become emblematic of Syria’s version of the Arab Spring: Homs. This city, an opposition stronghold, was subjected to a 26-day siege by the Syrian Army in February. The estimates of how many people perished vary, with the city’s chief of police admitting to some 3,000 dead and the western press reporting twice or more that number.

I am here in my role as head of the Philippine House of Representatives Committee on Overseas Workers’ Affairs. My trip to Homs is part of a mission to locate Filipino overseas workers in Syria—mainly domestic workers—who are still in the country or have been killed in the fighting. The plan is to repatriate them or their remains to the Philippines. Filipino workers are among the millions of overseas workers who have been or are likely to be caught in the crossfire of the still continuing Arab Spring.

The signs of war are fresh as we enter the city, which lies some 170 kilometers from Damascus. There is no one on the streets at high noon, and Baath University, where some of the bitterest fighting took place, is deserted. The streets are littered with trash, and block after block of apartment buildings we pass show no signs of life. The asphalted roads are rough, imprinted with the tracks of tanks deployed to subdue the resistance. We pass the burned-out hulk of an armed personnel carrier.

At a roundabout where a statue of the current president’s father, Hafez Assad, casts a benign look at us a la Kim Il Sung, we encounter our first checkpoint. Soldiers armed with Kalashnikovs examine our papers as our driver, a Syrian named “Teddy” who speaks perfect English, explains in Arabic that we are trying to reach the police station to follow up the case of a Filipino domestic worker killed in an ambush during the fighting. We pass two more checkpoints manned by suspicious security men carrying the ubiquitous AK-47s before we reach the police station, the front of which sports a makeshift barricade of tires, wood, and stones. The thought flashes through my mind: This barrier will not stop a determined bomber.

Investigating a Death

We are met by the chief investigator, a man named Tobias, and we tell him that we really need to know more about the death a 23-year-old Filipina who was shot through the chest and killed in an ambush while traveling at 11 o’clock at night with her employer and his eight-year old son at the main highway on February 24, during the last phase of the siege of the city. We also want to locate her employer and collect her back wages to send to her family in the Philippines.

Tobias tells us that he helped bring the woman to the hospital, but all he had was the cell phone number of the employer, and this was no longer functioning. There was no number for a landline and no address for the employer, and he tells us that, for all he knew, the man and his family might have already left the city. Tobias tries to project concern and friendliness, but he is obviously eager to get rid of us.

Before we leave, however, I ask if he knew if there might be more Filipino domestic workers who might have been hurt or died during the siege. Having myself heard stories from Filipinas who had been trapped close to the fighting in Homs and then fleeing for the safety of the embassy in Damascus, I think it is very possible that there were more domestic workers who were killed or hurt in the fighting. But Tobias tells us he hasn’t heard of any.  Aside from him, we have no other contact in Homs for now, underlining the difficulties of finding out the fate of neutrals caught in a war zone when one does not get cooperation from the host government.

“This is very poor police work, for a guy who says he took personal charge of the girl’s case,” comments Teddy on Tobias’ work on the circumstances of the death of the Filipina whose employers were are tracing as we drive away from the police station.

A People under Occupation

As we make our way out of the city, we see several clusters of people, but these soon disappear and we pass by rows and rows of deserted apartment buildings. We see a child running here and there, and a few adolescents walking hurriedly, but that’s it. When we come to a checkpoint we passed earlier, we are stopped again, and this time, the soldiers are more suspicious and ask more questions. They want to see the papers of my Syrian companions and scan them for a long time, though for some reason they do not ask for my passport.

This is a city under occupation, I now realize fully. The soldiers regard the people as the enemy, and the people reciprocate. I do not see any prospect of reconciliation between the two sides. I half-jokingly request Teddy to bring us to Bab Amr, the lower-class district that bore the brunt of the government siege in February. He says that armed elements of the resistance are likely there, and they might mistake our car for one belonging to a government security agency. “You don’t want to become hostages of the terrorists,” says Teddy.  “As diplomats you would be worth millions to them.”

When we finally get back to the highway after a good hour and a half in this shattered city, we all breathe a sigh of relief. One of us jokes that, with little knowledge about Southeast Asia, the government soldiers probably thought I was Chinese and thus friendly to the Assad regime. Does that mean we say I am an Asian-American if we are stopped by rebel forces, I ask, and we all laugh. With Assad now isolated, with his allies for all practical purposes down to China, Russia, Iran, and Lebanon, most diplomats and foreign visitors are increasingly treated with suspicion.

An hour and a half later, we are in Tartus, off the shimmering Mediterranean Sea. People are in the streets, and even in the early afternoon, families are taking leisurely walks in the cornice that is Tartus’ most attractive feature. This place has been largely exempt from the unrest since the majority of people here are Allawites, the president’s people. The civil war has brought an end to the tourist economy, but there is a sense of physical security that one does not find, even in Damascus. I have a feeling it won’t last very long.

Tartus and Homs. Two different worlds. Two faces of the same country.

Protracted Civil War?

Back in Damascus the next day, I read that there has been heavy fighting between government troops and rebel forces in the eastern city of Deir Ezzour.  Along with the attacks in Damascus, the fighting in Deir Ezzour appears to reflect the rebels’ new strategy of attacking government forces at various points instead of taking them on in a big battle, as they did in Homs where they were no match for the heavy firepower of the Syrian Army. The so-called Free Syrian Army may be at a great disadvantage in terms of weaponry for now, but arms coming in from Saudi Arabia and some of the other Gulf states, which are ruled by Sunni elites that share the same sectarian religious affiliation as the majority of Syrians, will undoubtedly level the playing field.

Talks with diplomats, aid workers, and journalists in the few days I am in Syria produce varying assessments of the staying power of the Assad regime. Some say it can hold out indefinitely, some count its tenure in terms of months, and others say the collapse may come earlier than expected owing to an economy crippled by international sanctions. But there is consensus on one thing:  for the Syrian people, things will get worse before they get better.

I leave Syria, four days after I arrived, with 11 domestic workers in tow. They are happy to be out of harm’s way. But they also worry about the fate of the compatriots and friends they leave behind in a country that is descending into civil war.

-This commentary was published in Foreign Policy In Focus on 26/03/2012
-Foreign Policy In Focus columnist Walden Bello is chairman of the Committee on Overseas Workers’ Affairs in the Philippine House of Representatives, where he represents the party Akbayan. He is also an adjunct professor at the State University of New York at Binghamton and St. Mary’s University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

Danger Zone

The carrier strike groups in the Persian Gulf are an awesome reminder of U.S. military might.

BY SIMON HENDERSON

ABOARD THE USS ABRAHAM LINCOLN — U.S. President Barack Obama recently said that "all elements of American power" remain on the table to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. The USS Abraham Lincoln -- a nearly 100,000-ton supercarrier with a crew of around 4,800 and 50-plus aircraft -- is one of these elements. Steaming just 30 miles off the coast of Iran while launching F/A-18 Hornet strike aircraft, it is one of the most visibly impressive demonstrations of American military might.

If strategic power can be measured in decibels, the flight operations of a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier must rank at the top. Even if one wears earplugs as well as ear protectors, the noise on the flight deck is overwhelming. Depending on the aircraft type and the payload it is carrying, each F/A-18 is catapulted off either at full power or with the additional fiery blast of afterburners. Similarly on landing, the throttles are opened in case the aircraft's hook does not catch on one of the four arrestor wires stretched across the deck. An aircraft that misses is labeled a "bolter" and has only yards to once again become airborne and fly round for another attempt. In several hours of watching, there were few "bolters." Most pilots caught their target, the third wire.

The Lincoln has two squadrons of F/A-18C Hornets and two of the more advanced, two-seater F/A-18E/F Super Hornets, known as "Rhinos." Both types can perform ground strike as well as air-to-air roles. In addition, there were several EA-6B Prowlers, electronic warfare aircraft designed to detect and jam enemy radars, and an E-2C Hawkeye, with its giant circular radar, providing early-warning detection.

To the layperson and probably also the expert, it is hard to find the appropriate word to describe the potential of a carrier like the Lincoln. Superlatives like "incredible," "extraordinary," and "impressive" fall short. Put in simpler terms, it is, well, awesome.

The carrier, in a blurb handed out to visitors like myself, defines its mission as "to provide a credible, sustainable, independent forward presence and conventional deterrence in peacetime." (Emphasis in the original.)

With the carrier minutes from Iranian airspace, the term "forward presence" could be summed up, less diplomatically, as being "in your face." I can't speak for "credible" -- the question is perhaps best directed to Tehran -- but "sustainable" seems right, at least in terms of apparent effortlessness. And though "independent," the USS Abraham Lincoln is not alone. Carrier Strike Group 9, of which the Lincoln is the flagship, includes the air-defense cruiser USS Cape St. George and the destroyers USS Momsen and USS Sterett. In the haze, the outline of the British Royal Navy's newest warship, the HMS Daring, was also visible. Somewhere, but not discussed, was at least one U.S. submarine.

Along with another carrier strike group, led by the USS Carl Vinson, these ships make up the U.S. 5th Fleet. The size of the fleet is always in flux -- a carrier group departs as another arrives. There is usually a few days or weeks of overlap. At the moment, perhaps because Washington wants to emphasize support for its regional allies and apply pressure on Iran, the overlap seems longer than usual.

There is no U.S. naval dockyard in the region like, say, at Norfolk, Virginia. The home ports of the ships are back in the United States, though the headquarters of the fleet is the troubled island of Bahrain, where Shiite protesters are at odds with the Sunni ruling family. The 5th Fleet's headquarters -- its "Naval Support Activity" moniker deliberately avoids the word "base" -- is not a local issue, as U.S. personnel keep a low profile and any visiting ship moors well out of sight at a distant jetty.

The Lincoln was operating in a narrow "box" of international waters between the Arab Gulf states and Iran, though a casual observer would probably regard the location as being on the Iranian side of the Persian Gulf. The "box" lies north of the small Iranian island of Farsi and parallel to the Iranian coast opposite the city of Bushehr, where Iran's sole civil nuclear power reactor is located.

If I hadn't asked about the position of the carrier, nobody would have told me. When I asked the pilot who was preparing to fly me to the Lincoln in a propeller-driven C-2 Greyhound, known as the "COD" (for "carrier onboard delivery"), his reply was: "That's classified." Sitting trussed up uncomfortably, wearing a life jacket and a cranial helmet, and facing backward in the COD's cargo bay, I calculated from the rays of the sun shining in via two very small windows that we were heading, if anything, northwest from Bahrain. If we had flown east, the carrier would have been near the Strait of Hormuz, the choke point for shipping at the opening of the Gulf through which some 20 percent of the world's traded oil flows daily.

The U.S. Navy welcomes "distinguished visitors" to its carriers and handles such guests with accomplished ease. Along with a colleague, we made the pitch that such a trip would aid our understanding of issues like regional security and the export of energy from the region, which has more than half the world's oil reserves and a third of its natural gas. The narrative we heard from Rear Adm. Troy Shoemaker, the commander of the strike group, and U.S. 5th Fleet commander Vice Adm. Mark Fox was not different from the recent public remarks of U.S. officials.

There is almost daily communication, in one form or another, with the Iranian Navy, whether it's about the return of rescued fishermen from sinking vessels or the announcement of upcoming exercises. Still, there is considerable caution: A motorized dhow, adapted from the local style of sailing boat once used for fishing and pearl diving, steered a parallel course for some of the time during flight operations, probably monitoring (a more polite term for "spying on") the Lincoln. Helicopters from the carrier maintain an outer perimeter so that boats do not come close -- a cautionary measure to deter the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which employs small boats and has practiced "swarm" tactics.

Another potential threat to the U.S. Navy is Iran's use of mines, which it employed to disrupt shipping during its 1980-1988 war with Iraq. A March 15 Wall Street Journal article reported that the United States was doubling its minesweeping ships in the Persian Gulf to eight, implying that present capabilities were inadequate. Journalists who were recently embedded on a U.S. destroyer were briefed on the positions of Iranian land-based cruise missiles, which, like mines, theoretically, can threaten much of the Gulf, especially the well-defined inward and outward shipping lanes in the Strait of Hormuz. The United States and its allies can probably counter such threats within days, but the Lincoln's purpose is to deter the Iranians from even attempting any aggressive move.

Of course, an acid test is whether Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei finds the destructive powers of Carrier Strike Group 9 as impressive as those aboard its warships. We don't know what he is being told about the USS Abraham Lincoln and the USS Carl Vinson, currently operating outside the Strait of Hormuz in a "box" off Pakistan, in support of the international war effort in Afghanistan.

It is doubtful that anyone in Tehran will have told Khamenei about the motto of the USS Abraham Lincoln: "Shall not perish." The theme of President Lincoln's Gettysburg Address imbues the ship: "Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth." Representative democracy in this part of the Middle East is more than a bit elusive, though, with exceptions, most governments rule with the will of the people. And both the peoples and the conservative Arab states on the southern side of the Gulf are fearful of Iran's influence and apparent desire for hegemony.

Such arguments probably mean little to Khamenei, a lifelong hater of the United States who seems determined to make the permanent establishment of Islamic rule his legacy. So in the absence of an appeal to his sense of decency, the Lincoln represents an appeal to his instinct for survival. One is tempted to suggest that he should put on a pair of earphones, turn up the volume, and search "top gun intro" on YouTube.

The quietness of those first two minutes of Top Gun had previously struck me as strange, but I now realize it captures absolutely the muffled preparations for the next "cycle" of a carrier's air operations. Of course, in real life, there is no sudden rock music as the takeoffs begin, but otherwise, in terms of youthful enthusiasm of Tom Cruise-types, Top Gun's introductory four minutes captures exactly this element of American power. The mullahs in Iran should sit up and take notice.

-This commentary was published in Foreign Policy on 27/03/2012
-Simon Henderson is the Baker fellow and director of the Gulf and Energy Policy Program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy

Annan's Syria Plan: Too little, Too Late?

By Colum Lynch

                                                                            Former Secretary of U.N. Kofi Anan with the Mufti of Syria

After months of discord, the U.N. Security Council last week coalesced around a diplomatic initiative led by former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, presenting a rare show of unity in the face of President Bashar al-Assad's bloody repression of anti-government protesters.

But has the deal brought the world any closer to a democratic future under a leader that enjoys popular support? A 6-point political settlement, authored by Annan and endorsed this week by the U.N. Security Council, is ambiguous about the fate of President Assad.

And it has done little to change the realities on the ground, where the Syrian government has continued to secure military gains against an armed opposition that is running desperately low on ammunition.

"All the evidence ... points to Assad thinking basically that there is a military solution to this crisis, that given time and space he can crush the dissent," said one council diplomat. "We don't buy that. We think they squash it in one place, as they did recently in Homs, it pops up somewhere else, as we saw in Damascus."

But the official said that Assad's continuing defiance could provide a "hook" to bring the matter back before the Security Council, where it can adopt tougher measures against the regime.

The U.N. Security Council members, including U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice, have trumpeted the council's latest statement as a modest step that offers the best hope of ending the violence in Syria, opening the floodgates for humanitarian assistance and starting talks on a political transition, something that both sides have so far refused to do.

But for many outside observers the promise of sterner action remains uncertain, particularly given veto-wielding Russia's support for Assad, and it may too late to alter the course of development through diplomacy.

"This is a plan which, if it had been put on the table six weeks ago, would have offered Assad away out for the regime. But it has much less reason to bargain at a time where the regime is scoring successive military victories," said Richard Gowan, an expert on the United Nations at New York University's Center for International Cooperation. "The problem is that the Syrian military is continuing to create facts on the ground and Annan and the Security Council are inevitably struggling to keep up."

The Washington Post editorial page put it more bluntly on March 22: Annan's initiative, it reasoned, "will likely provide time and cover for the regime of Bashar al-Assad to continue using thanks and artillery to assault Syrian cities and indiscriminately kill civilians. That's exactly what the regime was doing Thursday -- pounding the city of Hama, where at least 20 people have been reported killed in army attacks in the past two days."

U.N. officials are convinced that Assad cannot end the uprising through military means, and that he will ultimately need to bargain the terms of his political future. "If he thinks he can weather this storm...he [has made] a serious misjudgment," Ban Ki-moon recently told a small group of reporters over lunch. "He cannot continue like this. He has gone too deep, too far."

In the meantime, Annan has urged the armed opposition's foreign sympathizers, including Qatar and Saudi Arabia, not to supply anti-government forces with weapons and other military supplies. Annan urged Russian President Dmitry Medvedev over the weekend to press Assad to accept his peace proposal, and reportedly met with top Chinese officials in Beijing on Sunday to secure a similar commitment.

Annan told the Security Council earlier this month that Assad's initial response to his diplomatic entreaties have been "disappointing." But he placed hope that a united Security Council could turn the diplomatic tide.

"The stronger and clearer the message you can collectively send," he told the council in a closed door briefing on March 16, "the better the chance that we can begin to shift the worrying dynamics of the conflict."

Engineering such a change may be complicated by Assad's own calculation of the personal dangers of peace. "There are risks for him in that he may fear he will lose on the negotiating table what he through fighting," said Gowan. "He may have concluded it is simply best to create a military fait accompli."

"The argument one hears advanced is that the damage to his political base has been so great he cannot survive long in office even if he wins on the battlefield," Gowan added. "Where as long as the fighting continues he has the upper hand, and so will never back down."

-This commentary was published in Foreign Policy on 26/03/2012
- Colum Lynch is a longtime Washington Post correspondent