Russia, Israel, Iran, and the Dark Reality of Diplomacy

All zero-sum international negotiations are shaped by the size of the guns on the table. This is the dark reality of diplomacy: when one is trying to convince someone to give up a critical behavior (stop a nuclear weapons program, stop invading Ukraine), or start a new one (less common on the modern world order), the key unspoken factor underlying the negotiations is the potential use of force.

The United States and other Western powers are in negotiations that they are struggling with:

• Russia continues to hold Crimea, and isn't planning on giving it back
• Iran is developing advanced nuclear capability and years of negotiations have brought a maybe-acceptable proposal (I still haven't done enough work here to analyze it)
• Israel keeps building settlements in the West Bank

At this point, it's unlikely that the US is going to get what it wants in any of these negotiations, due to one simple fact: it lacks the will to exert its power, and therefore has no bargaining power.

In essence, when the US is trying to compel behavioral change, the other partner asks, "what are the consequences if I refuse?" Currently, the answer is "nothing," so there is no reason to agree unless the carrots are really, really big. And the US currently has no stick available, as it is unwilling to go to interstate war. And in this, it brings no guns to the table: they're all left at home.

In Iran, Professor Muravchik suggests that the Iranians are so ideological and bent on empire that sanctions have little impact, and lifting them (to bring material prosperity) just isn't important enough for the Iranians to not also require a "stick" to change the equation. But despite the blundering letter by 47 Republican congresspeople, the US is not willing to strike Iran's nuclear facilities with aircraft. In fact, the President might have said that he'd even shoot down Israeli planes doing the same. Because the US has no appetite for war, Iran can hold out indefinitely--it gets what it wants by doing nothing, and will only be moved if the US offers something somehow better than nuclear weapons--I just struggle to imagine what that would be.

In Russia, the game is similar. I won't speak at too much length here as we mention it in a recent post, but in summary: Putin enjoys over 80% approval (compared to Obama's 47% and US Congress' 8%) domestically despite the West's sanctions and the drop of the ruble. This won't change, even with more sanctions. Until and unless the US or NATO are able to credibly threaten a military response, Russia will continue to take advantage of the relative gap in resistance to establish its status quo rule over Georgia, Ukraine and probably the Baltics.

Despite the US' ongoing frustration with Israel's settlement construction in the West Bank and suspended peace talks with Fatah, threatening to withdraw the over-$3Billion/yr military aid to Israel is simply not on the table, probably due to concerns for Israel's immediate security. It's a different example than Russia and Iran, but another place where the US is unwilling to use a threat of risk to a nation's security in negotiation.

Until this changes, the US will have no bargaining power here or with China, North Korea, the Taliban, Syria's Assad, or any other frustrating group. Whether or not some of these issues are worth military intervention is a question that should be taken on a case-by-case basis. The point of this article is to simply drive home the fact that negotiations with powers like Iran will always end in failure if the military option is totally off the table; it is unwise to expect anything else.

The Baltics as Russia's Next Target -- And Their Loss of Confidence in NATO

Thanks to reader Tom G. for the inspiration on this one.

I continue to be convinced that Putin's Russia has its sights on the Baltics as it looks to expand its "sphere of influence" back to Soviet days (The Economist has its own take on this idea). This isn't for completely arbitrary reasons: as we discussed way back in 2011 in the series (probably my favorite from my rapidly-approaching-400-posts) on the Blocanization of Europe, and again in May 2014, Russia is not doing this for arbitrary reasons.

Its natural security, according to the "realist" International Relations school, depends on its ability to keep its industry, natural resources, and population centers secure, and that means land buffers (as well as other defensive measures like tactical nuclear weapons, air defenses, etc) between NATO and its core.

And note that all this stuff is jammed right up on its western border (below is a map of population density in Russia).

Source

We also discussed why holding Sevastopol was important: to have access to a warm water port that Russia might have lost had Ukraine gone into NATO. Putin made it all-but-clear that this was the motivation for invading Crimea when he said recently that Russia decided to annex the territory when Ukraine ousted President Yakunovych: while the propaganda was about "protecting Russian citizens" (a la the Sudetenland), the reason to focus first on Crimea was about the Sevestapol warm water port, and the risk that the new pro-EU Ukrainian government would wrest it from Russia.

Putin's declaration of a "New Russia" in eastern Ukraine is creepily akin to Hitler's "Lebensraum," particularly because it has the same motivations. Hitler did not want Eastern Europe simply to have more territory: it was about security.

But not all is secure in Russia even if it does settle with Ukraine in the way it wants (and it will, I think). St. Petersburg remains at serious risk from NATO's presence in the Baltics, and pulling the Baltics under Russia's control is arguably even more important than having eastern Ukraine. It's just not on the table yet because Russia is using Ukraine--a non-NATO country--to test NATO's will.

(And we still remember the Georgian invasion and the successful annexation of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, yes?)

But the Baltics are NATO Countries--Could He Really Take Them Over?
Sure. Putin is excellent at messaging, enough so that even today the West is still trying to make the case that Russia has sent troops into Eastern Ukraine (rather than it being so widely believed and obvious that nobody talks about whether it's true anymore). Putin is clever enough to not simply declare war and march in.

Russia has been using "cyber warfare" against Estonia and has stepped up efforts to incite unrest in its 25% Russian population (Latvia also has a 25% Russian population and is similarly worried).

In Ukraine, Russia has used non-uniformed troops (the famous "little green men") in both Crimea and eastern Ukraine, and has focused on arming annexationist rebels to keep a shroud of plausible deniability. Its efforts in both Ukraine and Georgia have been nothing short of brilliant.

But even if it did invade directly: Estonia and Latvia are tiny, and Russia could overwhelm them in hours. It's already frequently conducting military exercises on the border, any of which could turn into an invasion--Israel famously used this tactic in the six-day war. And if it does invade and deploy extensive anti-air defenses, NATO would have to commit to a bloody, protracted campaign to defeat Russia militarily in order to get them to back off. And much like Germany in 1939, Russia has good reason to believe that just won't happen. So after it wraps up Ukraine, it might just go ahead with the Baltics, after the heat has died down and the Americans have become too distracted in the Middle East to mount a credible response.

Hold On: Why Do You Keep Comparing Putin to Hitler?
Putin is obviously not a madman hellbent on committing genocide upon an entire race of people, so don't take it the wrong way.

But Putin is interested in taking over swaths of Europe, and for similar reasons as the Germans. It's worth noting that Germany had gone to war with its neighbors many times before WW2 in its short history as a unified nation, for always the same reasons: security. Putin's "testing the West" behavior is similar to Hitler's in the 1930's, and the propaganda of "protecting ethnic peoples" is similar. The West's response is note quite as weak as in Munich, but Russia is willing to deal with sanctions, and support for Putin remains over 80% even as the economy takes a major hit. His absolutely brilliant propaganda campaign is galvanizing the Russian people for an ongoing war with the West. Sanctions aren't a deterrent, and won't be: pretending they will be is probably naive.

Back to Business: Aren't NATO Countries Obligated to Act?
They're obligated to act, but as the Economist points out, Article V leaves ambiguity in the type of action member states are obligated to take. It doesn't require that NATO countries use military force, which is important. Russia has held off so far invading NATO countries, but it's running out of buffer-states to build without going to NATO countries like the Baltics for that security it craves.

The Baltics and the Visegrad 4 are both taking matters into their own hands as their confidence in NATO wanes. The V4 formed their own battle group, independent of NATO command. The Baltics are stepping up defense spending as Russia flies daily "exercises" near their borders. They're losing confidence in NATO's willingness to defend them. Sadly, the Baltics are not going to be able to resist Russia's invasion, but they may be depending on the V4 to act when NATO doesn't: Joe Biden actually went to Poland to keep Poland from leading the V4 against Russia when it invaded Crimea.

Germany wanted to station troops in the Baltics as a response. This would put NATO lives on the line, meaning that Russian attacks would risk killing NATO military personnel--increasing the impetus to go to war for NATO--essentially a form of deterrent. This was shut down in Brussels.

So What's Going to Happen?

The question, as usual, is ultimately about deterrence: does Russia believe the US and NATO will get alarmed enough to shed blood over Russia's next military move? Ultimately: did Putin see oh-so-much wormlike behavior in Minsk? If so, deterrence has failed.

On another note, the Blogger search feature is actually quite impressive. If you want to do a deeper-dive on any serious topic like Russia, Iraq, Afghanistan, ISIS, etc, I've pretty-enthusiastically tagged everything I've written, so a simple topic search will get you some rich and historical stuff. 

The End of the War on Terror

We're in the middle of an ideological war.

At least, some of us are.

The "War on Terror," in retrospect, was probably a bad policy name. "War on Al-Qaeda and its allies" would have probably been better. Really, we're not waging a war on Hamas, Hezbollah, the Basques (of Spain), Sri Lankan Tamil Tigers, Indonesian who-knows-what-they-call-themselves, etc. I'm equally unconvinced that the War on Terror is secretly a "War on Radical Islam." We surely don't like Radical Islam... nor should we. But we shouldn't be out to militarily crush the ideology, and we haven't shown signs of trying to do that. We've stayed far away from many of the most radical Islamists-- Syria, southern Lebanon, Indonesia, Somalia. Iraq was probably the least of our Radical Islam worries in the Middle East... at least until we showed up. There's certainly been no tendency in the US "War on Terror" to unilaterally fight terrorists or Radical Islamists.

We're rather confident at this point that Bush was planning on taking out the Hussein regime even before 9/11, so let's not even consider the 2003 invasion as part of the War on Terror itself (regardless of what the President claimed at the time). Given that, we've had one major military operation against a terror operation, and this has been in Afghanistan.

Even our considerations of action (military and not) against Iran are unrelated to Terror or Islam. Iran's pressing need for nuclear weapons, suspiciously combined with a pressing need to wipe Israel off the map, should reasonably make any US foreign policymaker feel some hostility. But on top of it, evidence mounts that Iran is meddling in Iraq and making Coalition lives harder in creating security for the country. Given our desperation to fix up Iraq and go home, hostility in US foreign policymakers is understandable.

So it's clear that the "War on Terror" is poorly named. But why change it?

A few reasons. First, wars on concepts tend to do poorly, and help accentuate individual failures. The War on Drugs and War on Poverty are failed policies that we're hanging on to (and spending gobs of money on) regardless of performance. We don't need another one of these. Second, and more importantly, US foreign policy needs to be clear. We need to let our allies and enemies alike know where we draw the line between tolerable and unacceptable behavior. We need to let potential adversaries know what will cause us to go to war. The "War on Terror" is a war against a tactic. If we declare that we'll go to war against anyone who uses this tactic, then we either have to follow through with it and be consistent, or the sentiment will be lost, and none of our potential adversaries will know where our line is.

This clarity of communication was key to fighting the Cold War effectively, and will be key to fighting against potential terror enemies effectively. From here, I think we should replace the "War on Terror" with, indeed, a "War on Al-Qaeda and its allies." Many countries have interpreted the former as the latter, which is excellent: Al-Qaeda is a black name, and is not given haven in any country that wishes to avoid our wrath. Since our war began, they have lost ground in most states with strong security and administration (and have gained in Iraq and Northwestern Pakistan, where there is relatively little government influence). They've also lost ideological support overall:

Defeating Al-Qaeda, and making it clear that anyone who attacks us or our allies will fall onto our black list, should be a much more clear and effective line. Middle Eastern countries will have a strong incentive to crack down on potential radical groups that should wish us harm, so that we don't have to show up and do the cracking down ourselves.

Hopefully, a less ideological administration will be elected in 2008, and may take this more pragmatic approach to our fight against Al-Qaeda and its allies. Should that occur, I will be toasting, hopefully with many of you, to the End of the War on Terror.