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

Six Big Lies About How Jerusalem Runs Washington

From the Jewish cabal to the Capitol Hill Knesset, the worst leaps of logic when it comes to Israel, U.S. politics, and the Middle East.

BY AARON DAVID MILLER

                                                                                   US President Barack Obama

Several years after leaving government, I wrote a piece in the Washington Post titled "Israel's Lawyer." The article was an honest effort to explain how several senior officials in U.S. President Bill Clinton's administration (myself included) had a strong inclination to see the Arab-Israeli negotiations through a pro-Israel lens. That filter played a role -- though hardly the primary one -- in the failure of endgame diplomacy, particularly at the ill-fated Camp David summit in July 2000.

Unsurprisingly, the piece was hijacked in the service of any number of agendas, especially by critics of Israel only too eager to use my narrow point about the Clinton years to make their broader one: America had long compromised its own values and interests in the Middle East by its blind and sordid obeisance to the Jewish state and its pro-Israeli supporters in the United States.

Here we go again. Election years seem to bring out the worst -- not only in politicians, but in advocates, analysts, and intellectuals too. Nowhere are the leaps and lapses of logic and rationality greater than in the discussion of Israel, the Jews, domestic U.S. politics, and the Middle East. Once again, we're hearing that a U.S. president is being dragged to war with Iran by a trigger-happy Israeli prime minister and his loyal acolytes in America.

Before we lose our collective minds (again), it might be useful to review some of the myths and misconceptions about domestic U.S. politics and America's Middle East policies that still circulate all too widely in Europe and the Arab world -- and sadly in the United States too. Here are a half-dozen of the worst ones.

1. The White House is Israeli-occupied territory.

The idea that American Jews in collusion with the Israeli government (and, for some time now, evangelical Christians) hold U.S. foreign policy hostage is not only wrong and misleading but a dangerous, dark trope. It coexists with other hateful -- and, yes, anti-Semitic -- canards about how Jews control the media and the banks, and the world as well. It's reality distortion in the extreme, with little basis in fact. The historical record just doesn't support it. Strong, willful presidents who have real opportunities (and smart strategies to exploit them) to promote U.S. interests almost always win out and trump domestic lobbies.

Indeed, when it counts and national interests demand it, presidents who know what they're doing move forward in the face of domestic pressures and usually prevail. Whether it's arms sales to the Arabs (advanced fighter jets to Egyptians or AWACS to Saudis) or taking tough positions on Arab-Israeli negotiating issues in the service of agreements (see: Henry Kissinger and the 1973-1975 disengagement agreements with Israel, Egypt, and Syria; President Jimmy Carter, Camp David, and the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty in 1978 and 1979; and Secretary of State James Baker and the 1991 Madrid peace conference), administrations have their way. The fights can be messy and politically costly, but that doesn't preclude policymakers from having them.

No U.S. president would pick a fight with a close ally, particularly one that had strong domestic support, without good reason and a clear purpose. To wit, President George H.W. Bush and Baker's decision to deny the Israelis billions of dollars in housing-loan guarantees because of settlement construction on the eve of the Madrid conference made sense. It sent a powerful signal to the Israelis and Arabs at a critical moment that America meant business. President Barack Obama's war with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over a settlement freeze didn't: One was a productive fight with a purpose, and the other was an unproductive one with no strategy. At the end of the day, Obama got the worst of all outcomes: He pissed off the Israelis and the Palestinians, and he got no negotiations and no freeze. That Obama was seen to have backed down in the end only made matters worse, making it appear that he lost his nerve with Netanyahu. Even so, none of this means the Israelis run the White House. Obama's failure was much a result of a self-inflicted wound.

2. The U.S.-Israel relationship rests on shared values alone.

Israel's critics believe that without domestic politics, there would be little to the U.S.-Israel special relationship. Israel's supporters, meanwhile, like to believe that politics has little to do with it. Neither is right. The U.S.-Israel relationship is a curious marriage of shared values, national interests, and domestic politics.

Sure, common values are at the top of the list. There's no way the bond between Washington and Jerusalem would be as strong and as durable these many years without broad public belief that it was in America's national interest to support a fellow democracy. These shared values more than anything else -- not Israel’s importance as an strategic ally -- is the foundation of the bond.

Since 1950, only 22 countries have maintained their democratic character continuously -- and Israel's one of them. That the Jewish people have a very dark history of persecution and genocide and that millions of Americans have powerful religious connections to Israel and the Holy Land has only made the sell easier and the bond stronger.

But let's not kid ourselves -- and activists at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and other Jewish organizations don't. Without the strong vocal support of a unified American Jewish community that brings pressure to bear in Congress, assistance levels to Israel would not be nearly as high as they have been for so long. AIPAC not only assiduously guards the pre-existing pro-Israeli tilt among the American public, but it also defines for much of the Jewish and political establishment what it means to be pro-Israel in America today. Its clout on Capitol Hill sends a powerful message to elected officials, many of whom already share general sympathy with Israel and who have no desire to cross swords with a powerful lobby that might jeopardize what they've come to Washington to do: advance their constituents' interests.

3. Lobbies are evil.

The United States' Founding Fathers were very worried about factions with special interests. But lobbies and special interests advocating causes -- from guns to tobacco to senior citizens -- aren't some kind of dark cabal plotting in a cloakroom. They are a natural part of America's democratic political system and, yes, part of a culture that has many excesses that bend the system and often reflect the seamier aspects of U.S. politics. But good luck trying to eliminate the practice of citizens and groups organizing to press their elected representatives to support an issue. The U.S. system -- whatever the Founders intended -- was a natural for lobbing and special pleading.

I'm not sure that has ever been clearly understood in the Middle East or in Europe, where lobbies are viewed as some nefarious force operating in the shadows with the aim of holding U.S. foreign policy hostage. When a former Arab diplomat I know once referred to the U.S. Congress as the Little Knesset, he was not only mocking a system -- he was jealous too. Arab Americans only wish they could marshal AIPAC's power.

America's foreign policy -- like its unruly politics-- is forged in a competitive arena of many voices, influences, and interests. But let me be clear: I don't want the American Jewish community controlling Washington's Middle East policy; nor do I want it run by Congress or regional specialists in the State Department for that matter.

Here's where a willful, smart president with a sound strategy is critically important -- both in exercising constitutional powers and in responding to the practical reality that the executive branch is the only actor in the U.S. system that can guide and lead the country abroad. Indeed, the power of the pro-Israel community recedes the farther away you get from Capitol Hill. The pro-Israel community has a powerful voice, but it doesn't have a veto.

4. His Jewish advisors made him do it.

This charge -- which has been leveled at senior officials in both Clinton's and George W. Bush's administrations -- that presidents are controlled by a tiny group of American Jewish advisers is as absurd as it is pernicious. I speak from personal experience. I admit it freely: Several Clinton administration officials, including me -- with the best of intentions -- adopted an approach to the negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians in 1999 and 2000, both on substance and on process, that reflected Israeli needs far more than those of the Palestinians. These views, however, gained currency not because the president's advisors, who happened to be American Jews, were pushing them, but because they made sense to a non-Jewish president with great sensitivity for the Israelis -- and a great deal for the Palestinians too.

Some of these same advisors worked for Bush 41 and Baker too, yet policy turned out quite differently, much more balanced and tougher on Israel (take, for example, the denial of loan guarantees). The fact is that policy advisors -- to paraphrase The Eagles in one of the band's better love songs -- don't take policymakers anywhere they don't already want to go. Here is where adult supervision is essential. Indeed, it's ultimately the responsibility of the president to sort through these views and determine which ones make sense and which ones don't -- and then to make the best decision possible. The key is to have a variety of views. To blame senior official X as the primary reason a president supports Israel or favors this approach or that is absurd.

Obama is no lawyer for Israel. If he chooses not to push his confrontation with Netanyahu, it's not because an advisor with a pro-Israel agenda is whispering in his ear; it's because the president has his own political agenda, has other priorities, or realizes the fight won't produce the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations he seeks. In the Obama administration, you'd better believe that it's the president who runs things.

5. Election-year politics are driving Obama to war with Iran.

You've heard the rap many times. Election-year politics erode a president's room to maneuver, chain him to collecting votes, and increase the odds substantially that political interests will trump the country's. This year's presidential election has been dominated by the economy, but when foreign policy has intruded into the campaign, it has been on one issue: Iran. It's erroneous, however, to conclude that because it's an election year, Obama is being pushed to war -- either by Republicans or by the pro-Israel community. Sure, he has toughened his rhetoric, but whether that's smart politics or smart policy (to keep the Iranians under pressure) isn't clear. It's probably both.

The fact is, this president doesn't do anything quickly or recklessly -- or under pressure. He's the deliberator-in-chief. And as he ponders, one thing is clear: The last thing he needs leading up to an election he has a very good chance of winning is a war in the Middle East. And an Israeli strike or an American one that would bring on $200 a barrel oil, thus raising prices at the pump and deflating the fragile U.S. economic recovery, is not something Obama wants. Whatever the Israeli prime minister got from the president in their meeting this month at the White House, it wasn't a green -- or even a yellow -- light to strike Iran's nuclear sites.

6. Barack Obama is just as pro-Israel as Bill Clinton or George W. Bush.

There's no question that Obama understands and appreciates the special relationship between Israel and the United States. But Obama isn't Bill Clinton or George W. Bush when it comes to Israel -- not even close. These guys were frustrated by Israeli prime ministers too, but they also were moved and enamored by them (Clinton by Yitzhak Rabin, Bush by Ariel Sharon). They had instinctive, heartfelt empathy for the idea of Israel's story, and as a consequence they could make allowances at times for Israel's behavior even when it clashed with their own policy goals. Obama is more like George H.W. Bush when it comes to Israel, but without a strategy.

If Obama is emotional when it comes to Israel, he's hiding it. Netanyahu obviously thinks he's bloodless. But then again, the U.S. president can be pretty reserved on a number of issues. Obama doesn't feel the need to be loved by the Israelis, and perhaps American Jews either. Combine that with a guy who's much more comfortable in gray than in black and white, and you have a president who sees Israel's world in much more nuanced terms, which is clearly hard for many Israelis and American Jews to accept. In Obama's mind, Israel has legitimate security needs, but it's also the strongest regional power. As a result, he believes that the Israelis should compromise on the peace process, give nonmilitary pressures against Iran time to work, and recognize that despite the uncertainties of the Arab Spring, now is the time to make peace with the Palestinians.

If Obama had a chance to reset the U.S.-Israel relationship and make it a little less special, he probably would. But I guess that's the point: He probably won't have the chance. If he gets a second term, he'll more than likely be faced with the same mix of Middle East headaches, conflicting priorities, narrow maneuvering room, and the swirl of domestic politics that bedevils him today. If the U.S. president fails to get an Israeli-Palestinian peace, it will be primarily because the Israelis, the Palestinians, and Barack Obama wouldn't pay the price, not because the pro-Israel community in America got in his way.

-This comment was published in Foreign Policy on 21/03/2012
-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

USA-Israel-Iran: Rules Of The Game

What message were U.S. officials trying to send by releasing the results of a CentCom Iran war game?

BY ROBERT HADDICK

On March 19, the New York Times described a classified U.S. Central Command war game conducted this month that simulated the outcome of an Israeli attack on Iran. According to U.S. officials who discussed the results with the newspaper, the game "forecasts that the [Israeli] strike would lead to a wider regional war, which could draw in the United States and leave hundreds of Americans dead." Marine Gen. James Mattis, commander of Central Command, found the outcome "particularly troubling" because an Israeli first strike would have "dire consequences across the region and for United States forces there."

The article, with its discussion of "dire consequences," is one more indication of the gap between the Israeli government's calculations concerning Iran and those of the U.S. government. Why that analytical gap exists should be of interest to policymakers.   The military's conclusion that U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf region could suffer hundreds of deaths following an Israeli strike could be an indication that U.S. commanders and policymakers have not adequately prepared for such a scenario. But perhaps most important, we should examine what goals U.S. officials had in mind when they leaked the results of the supposedly secret war game to the New York Times.

According to the article, the two-week Central Command war game, called Internal Look, was specifically designed to test internal military communications and coordination among battle staffs in the Pentagon, Central Command headquarters in Tampa, and field units in the Persian Gulf. According to the scenario, Iran would conclude that the United States was an Israeli partner and therefore U.S. military forces in the Gulf were complicit in the Israeli first strike. The simulation had Iranian anti-ship missiles strike a U.S. warship killing hundreds of sailors. The United States then retaliated with its own strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.

This simulation appears to differ sharply from Israeli expectations. According to Jeffrey Goldberg's reporting at Bloomberg, Israeli officials believe Iran will not target U.S. ships or facilities in the region because it would hardly be in Iran's interest to bring Central Command's military power into the conflict (a point I made in a recent column). Indeed, according to Goldberg, Israeli policymakers believe that if Israel's strikes are limited to a handful of nuclear targets away from urban areas, Iran might actually downplay the severity or cover up the damage, as Syria did after the 2007 Israeli strike on its nuclear reactor.

Since Internal Look was designed to give U.S. military global command and control systems a workout, it would not help commanders achieve that objective if the scenario didn't escalate up to high-intensity combat action. Requiring the scenario to do that is completely different than having the war game objectively conclude that such escalation is the most likely outcome -- a conclusion Israeli planners presumably don't share. If Internal Look really did make an unbiased and informed prediction of Iranian behavior, it is easy to understand why Mattis is troubled. But if the exercise had to manufacture that Iranian response in order to achieve other exercise goals, it is less easy to understand his anxiety. In any case, he and his staff should consider why their assumptions -- which seem to require irrational Iranian behavior -- differ from Israeli assumptions.

Mattis's long experience as a combat commander may have taught him to err on the side of pessimism when formulating military plans. In this case, that pessimism would imply having U.S. forces in the Gulf assume Iranian missiles will soon be on their way following an Israeli first strike. If that is the case, have U.S. commanders done all they can to prepare their forces for Iranian action? And have U.S. policymakers done all they could to deter Iran's decision-makers from striking in the first place?

On March 16, Adm. Jonathan Greenert, chief of naval operations, briefed defense reporters on what the Navy is doing to increase its readiness in the Persian Gulf. Greenert is sending additional minesweeping and patrol craft to the Gulf and will add more short-range defensive weapons to Navy vessels operating there, in response to Iranian small boat "swarming" tactics. Greenert expects most of these capabilities to be in place "within a year." This seems a bit tardy, given Defense Secretary Leon Panetta's forecast of an Israeli strike in "April, May or June," and a major Pentagon war game from 2002 that showed the effectiveness of the Iranian small boat swarming threat.

U.S. leaders could likewise do more to deter Iran's decision-makers in an effort to avert the dire Internal Look scenario. In a recent discussion of possible Iranian behavior, Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stated that a U.S. conflict with Iran could occur not because of Iranian irrationality but more from "gross misjudgment." Dempsey pointed to the disastrous assessments made by an otherwise rational Saddam Hussein, who serially misjudged U.S. will and intentions. U.S. officials could help Iran's decision-makers avoid similar mistakes by rapidly reinforcing U.S. air and naval forces in the region, conducting useful and visible training exercises once the reinforcements have arrived, and by clearly stating to Iran's leaders the consequences of Iranian action against U.S. forces and interests. In January, Panetta expressed confidence in the level of U.S. military forces already present in the region. But if, as Dempsey believes, Iran's leaders are rational, yet Mattis's planners still believe Iran will attack U.S. forces, either Panetta is wrong, U.S. leaders haven't been clear with Iran, or both. And that says nothing good about U.S. preparations regarding Iran.

Finally, why did U.S. officials leak the results of Internal Look to the New York Times? If it's a memo aimed at Israeli policymakers to complain about their saber-rattling, the message is unlikely to get through. U.S. and Israeli officials at all levels have thoroughly discussed the Iran issue and have clearly formulated different assumptions. Repeating the message will hardly help at this point. U.S. military officials may have leaked the story in order to make the case for a military build-up in the region. But they would only need to make such a case in the New York Times if the White House had for some reason refused such a request.

Finally, Mattis and others may have revealed the war game's pessimistic conclusions in order to prepare the U.S. public for the increasing likelihood of another war and for the casualties that could result. If that is the case, political leaders should have an honest and open discussion with the public, instead of sending a murky message through anonymous leaks to the New York Times.

-This commentary was published in Foreign Policy on 23/03/2012
-Robert Haddick is managing editor of Small Wars Journal

Why Washington Didn't Intervene In Syria Last Time

In 1982, the United States said very little about Hafez al-Assad's shelling of Hama and no one suggested that the United States intervene. In the wake of the Arab Spring, Washington is willing to speak out against Bashar al-Assad's crackdown in Homs, but is not yet willing to send in troops.

By Richard W. Murphy

Syria's regime has changed little since the days of Hafiz al-Assad, the father of the current president, Bashar al-Assad. But the U.S. handling of Syria today contrasts sharply with Washington's behavior in the past. In the period with which I am most familiar, from 1974, when the embassy reopened after being closed for seven years following the Six-Day War and I became U.S. ambassador to Syria, until Hafiz al-Assad's death in 2000, the United States was little concerned with Assad's repressive domestic policies.

Assad came to power in 1970 after spending years rising through the ranks of the Syrian Air Force and the Baath Party, which had seized control of Syria in 1963. Once in office, he proceeded to build up the security services, which eventually came to consist of some 15 to 17 (often competing) forces. He controlled the senior appointments of each service and ensured that they all funneled their reports -- including reports on his citizens' movements and moods -- to his office. He ruled with a firm hand, and when, in the 1980s, the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood intensified its campaign of violence against him, he authorized an unprecedented harsh response: the shelling of the city of Hama, the group's headquarters, in 1982. The campaign left at least 10,000 Syrians dead.

At the time, the United States said very little about the Hama shelling, and there was no suggestion that the United States intervene. Had we attempted to do so, Assad would have vigorously resisted and the Arab world would have joined him in rejecting an American-organized effort against the regime. From 1974 until the regional upheavals last spring, the United States was pursuing other interests in Syria.

Throughout Hafiz Assad's presidency, it was Syria's foreign policy that most concerned the United States. Primarily, Washington worked to bring about Assad's support for the Arab-Israeli peace process. After the October 1973 Arab-Israeli war, as Egyptian President Anwar Sadat promoted closer relations with Israel, Assad methodically molded Syria's role as leader of the Arab Steadfastness and Confrontation Front. He maintained that a united Arab world was the only way to confront Israel and to create a durable peace.

In 1974, U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger mediated a Syrian-Israeli disengagement agreement on the Golan Heights, which restored to Syria control over a slice of territory that it had lost to Israel in 1973. Assad expected this to be the first among many such arrangements to restore Syria's 1967 borders. No such thing would happen. The Israelis concentrated on making peace with Egypt and, over the years, only periodically turned to Syria when they needed a foil to peace negotiations with the Palestinians.

For several years, Assad rejected U.S. attempts to move toward a peace agreement without an advance guarantee of total return of Syria's land. He maintained that getting the basic support of both peoples for a peace agreement would take a generation. Only in the late 1980s was he prepared to state publicly that he would support "a peace of the brave," and even then, to the general dissatisfaction of the United States and Israel, gave virtually no detail on his vision of what that peace would involve.

The second major American concern in Syria was the country's involvement in the 1975-1990 Lebanese civil war. In 1976, after Beirut asked for Syrian military support against the Palestinian Liberation Army, Assad sent in troops, carefully observing Israeli strictures on the areas of their deployment. Once installed, the Syrians overstayed their welcome, and their presence came to be widely condemned as an occupation. In the course of the 1990s the United States imposed financial sanctions on the country, expanding a sanctions regime that eventually also targeted Damascus for its weapons of mass destruction programs, association with al Qaeda and the Taliban, and corruption.

The Syrians finally left Lebanon in 2005, after a public outcry over the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, which, many Lebanese believe, was instigated by the Syrian leadership. American criticism showed Washington's mounting unhappiness with Syrian policymakers and their system of governance. This discontent, however, still did not extend to intervening in Syria's domestic policies.

Bashar Assad, who succeeded his father in 2000, brought a more outgoing personality and apparent interest in reforms. Syrians and the West initially hoped that he would fulfill that promise, but hope for reform soon faded. In contrast to his father, who made few promises but kept his word, Bashar was quick to promise reforms but failed to implement them. He took some steps to liberalize the economy, but the Baath Party, which had long since become mostly just a regime mouthpiece and a corrupt patronage network, retained its monopoly of power. He jailed political moderates who pushed for government reforms, and the reign of the security services continued unchallenged.

Bashar continued to engage in talks about peace with Israel for a few years in talks led by Turkey, but in the meantime Washington had become more concerned with Syria's long-standing friendship with Iran. Cultivated originally by Hafiz Assad as a function of his rivalry with Saddam Hussein's Iraq, the Syrian-Iranian relationship had, over the years, brought Damascus significant investment, trade, and political support. In Washington, the talk was of the need to wean Syria from its ties with Iran. Doing so was seen as a way to deliver a strategic setback to Iran.

Then came the Arab Spring. After the relatively bloodless departures of Tunisia's Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali and Egypt's Hosni Mubarak and the successful fight to unseat Libya's Muammar al-Qaddafi, many assumed that Assad's fall was inevitable and imminent. From the very early days, Damascus maintained that all demonstrations were the work of imperialist thugs and Zionist terrorists and deserved the harshest possible destruction. In the southern town of Dera'a, where the regime arrested and reportedly tortured teenage graffiti writers, to the intensive shelling of Homs, Idlib, and other centers of resistance, Bashar reacted with the brutality that his father had displayed in 1982 but this time, thanks to amateur video makers within Syria and the new communications media of Facebook and Twitter, the world was watching.

Last August, President Barack Obama called on Assad to step aside. The regime repeated its accusations that the wave of demonstrations and violence was caused by outside agents of imperialism and Zionism. That played well with many Syrians, who have a highly developed sense of conspiracy politics and victimization at the hands of foreign powers. Washington then welcomed the Arab League's initiative to send a monitoring mission to the country and its referral of the Syrian situation to the Security Council. As the violence spiraled, Washington recalled its ambassador, as it had in 1986 and 2005. The Obama administration left behind no staff but at the same time made clear its opposition to arming the Syrian rebels, who had initially pursued peaceful demonstrations but some of whom, when faced with heavy artillery and tanks, decided that only armed rebellion would have any chance of success. 

Washington hopes that whenever the Assad regime is replaced, it will be by leadership guaranteeing a multiparty political structure and a foreign policy free of Iranian influence. What Washington can do to advance those goals is, however, very much in question. Russia and China vetoed a draft United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Syria that would have given a measure of hope to the opposition and pause to the regime.

President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have spoken out repeatedly against Syria's repression of its own citizens, but as yet there is no sign that their words, or those from any other quarter, are having an impact. Assad's reaction to the unrest has primarily been to apply more force. He benefits from the fact that the Syrian opposition remains highly fragmented, and that to train an effective military force to confront that of his regime would be time-consuming and difficult.

Washington is helping shape a more coherent political opposition. But U.S. policymakers must keep clearly in mind that the regime has its supporters in all walks of life and across Syria's religious communities. Over the last 40 years, the Assad family built a reputation for safeguarding the country's minorities and for providing a predictable (if repressed) life for Syrians. Its policies have created both resistance to change and inertia.

Washington was long irritated by Syrian criticisms of Egypt over its peace treaty with Israel, by Damascus' support for Iranian nurturing of Hezbollah and Hamas, and by Syria's own prolonged military presence in Lebanon. It took the Arab Spring and the United States' worry about Iran's nuclear program to bring all of these resentments into focus. There have been defections from the Syrian military. However, unless these increase massively or there is a coup from within the Syrian military ranks, the prospect of prolonged confrontation and bloodshed in Syria is likely.

-This commentary was published in Foreign Affairs on 20/03/2012
-Richard Murphy was the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for the Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs from 1983 to 1989