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From: Office of Terje Rod-Larsen ‹
> 
Subject: July 25 update 
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2012 14:06:44 +0000 
25 July, 2012 
Article 1. 
NYT 
Syria Is Iraq 
Thomas L. Friedman 
Article 2. 
Stratfor 
Consequences of the Fall of Syrian Regime 
George Friedman 
Article 3. 
TIME 
Five Syria Nightmares 
Tony Karon 
Article 4. 
Agence Global 
The Destruction of Syria 
Patrick Seale 
Article 5. 
NYT 
The Candidates Talk Foreign Policy 
Editorial 
Article 6. 
The Atlantic 
Mitt Romney's Trip to Israel: Is the Jewish Vote up for 
Grabs? 
Beth Reinhard 
Article 7. 
Project Syndicate 
How the West Was Re-Won 
Dominique Moisi 
Article 1. 
NYT 
Syria 
Is  Iraq 
Thomas L. Friedman 
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July 24, 2012 -- Lord knows I am rooting for the opposition forces in 
Syria to quickly prevail on their own and turn out to be as democratically 
inclined as we hope. But the chances of this best-of-all-possible outcomes 
is low. That's because Syria is a lot like Iraq. Indeed, Syria is Iraq's twin 
— a multisectarian, minority-ruled dictatorship that was held together by 
an iron fist under Baathist ideology. And, for me, the lesson of Iraq is 
quite simple: You can't go from Saddam to Switzerland without getting 
stuck in Hobbes — a war of all against all — unless you have a well-
armed external midwife, whom everyone on the ground both fears and 
trusts to manage the transition. In Iraq, that was America. The kind of 
low-cost, remote-control, U.S./NATO midwifery that ousted Qaddafi and 
gave birth to a new Libya is not likely to be repeated in Syria. Syria is 
harder. Syria is Iraq. 
And Iraq was such a bitter experience for America that we prefer never to 
speak of it again. But Iraq is relevant here. The only reason Iraq has any 
chance for a decent outcome today is because America was on the ground 
with tens of thousands of troops to act as that well-armed midwife, 
reasonably trusted and certainly feared by all sides, to manage Iraq's 
transition to more consensual politics. My gut tells me that Syria will 
require the same to have the same chance. 
But because I absolutely would not advocate U.S. intervention on the 
ground in Syria or anywhere in the Arab world again — and the U.S. 
public would not support it — I find myself hoping my analysis is wrong 
and that Syrians will surprise us by finding their own way, with just arms 
and diplomatic assistance, to a better political future. I know columnists 
are supposed to pound the table and declaim what is necessary. But when 
you believe that what is necessary, an outside midwife for Syria, is 
impossible, you need to say so. I think those who have been advocating a 
more activist U.S. intervention in Syria — and excoriating President 
Obama for not leading that — are not being realistic about what it would 
take to create a decent outcome. 
Why? In the Middle East, the alternative to bad is not always good. It can 
be worse. I am awed at the bravery of those Syrian rebels who started this 
uprising, peacefully, without any arms, against a regime that plays by 
what I call Hama Rules, which are no rules at all. The Assad regime 
deliberately killed demonstrators to turn this conflict into a sectarian 
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struggle between the ruling minority Alawite sect, led by the Assad clan, 
and the country's majority of Sunni Muslims. That's why the opposite of 
the Assad dictatorship could be the breakup of Syria — as the Alawites 
retreat to their coastal redoubt — and a permanent civil war. 
There are two things that could divert us from that outcome. One is the 
Iraq alternative, where America went in and decapitated the Saddam 
regime, occupied the country and forcibly changed it from a minority 
Sunni-led dictatorship to a majority Shiite-led democracy. Because of 
both U.S. incompetence and the nature of Iraq, this U.S. intervention 
triggered a civil war in which all the parties in Iraq — Sunnis, Shiites and 
Kurds — tested the new balance of power, inflicting enormous casualties 
on each other and leading, tragically, to ethnic cleansing that rearranged 
the country into more homogeneous blocks of Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds. 
But the U.S. presence in Iraq contained that civil war and ethnic cleansing 
from spreading to neighboring states. And once that civil war burned itself 
out — and all sides were exhausted and more separated — the U.S. 
successfully brokered a new constitution and power-sharing deal in Iraq, 
with the Shiites enjoying majority rule, the Sunnis out of power but not 
powerless, and the Kurds securing semi-autonomy. The cost of this 
transition in lives and money was huge, and even today Iraq is not a stable 
or healthy democracy. But it has a chance, and it's now up to Iraqis. 
Since it is highly unlikely that an armed, feared and trusted midwife will 
dare enter the fray in Syria, the rebels on the ground there will have to do 
it themselves. Given Syria's fractured society, that will not be easy —
unless there is a surprise. A surprise would be the disparate Syrian 
opposition groups congealing into a united political front — maybe with 
the help of U.S., Turkish and Saudi intelligence officers on the ground —
and this new front reaching out to moderate Alawites and Christians who 
supported the Assads out of fear and agreeing to build a new order 
together that protects majority and minority rights. It would be wonderful 
to see the tyrannical Assad- Russia-Iran-Hezbollah axis replaced by a 
democratizing Syria, not a chaotic Syria. 
But color me dubious. The 20 percent of Syrians who are pro-Assad 
Alawites or Christians will be terrified of the new Sunni Muslim majority, 
with its Muslim Brotherhood component, and this Sunni Muslim majority 
has suffered such brutality from this regime that reconciliation will be 
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difficult, especially with each passing day of bloodshed. Without an 
external midwife or a Syrian Mandela, the fires of conflict could burn for 
a long time. I hope I am surprised. 
Anicic 2. 
Stratfor 
Consequences of the Fall of Syrian Regime
George Friedman 
July 24, 2012-- We have entered the endgame in Syria. That doesn't mean 
that we have reached the end by any means, but it does mean that the 
precondition has been met for the fall of the regime of Syrian President 
Bashar al Assad. We have argued that so long as the military and security 
apparatus remain intact and effective, the regime could endure. Although 
they continue to function, neither appears intact any longer; their control 
of key areas such as Damascus and Aleppo is in doubt, and the reliability 
of their personnel, given defections, is no longer certain. We had thought 
that there was a reasonable chance of the al Assad regime surviving 
completely. That is no longer the case. At a certain point -- in our view, 
after the defection of a Syrian pilot June 21 and then the defection of the 
Tlass clan -- key members of the regime began to recalculate the 
probability of survival and their interests. The regime has not unraveled, 
but it is unraveling. The speculation over al Assad's whereabouts and 
heavy fighting in Damascus is simply part of the regime's problems. 
Rumors, whether true or not, create uncertainty that the regime cannot 
afford right now. The outcome is unclear. On the one hand, a new regime 
might emerge that could exercise control. On the other hand, Syria could 
collapse into a Lebanon situation in which it disintegrates into regions 
held by various factions, with no effective central government. 
The Russian and Chinese Strategy 
The geopolitical picture is somewhat clearer than the internal political 
picture. Whatever else happens, it is unlikely that al Assad will be able to 
return to unchallenged rule. The United States, France and other European 
countries have opposed his regime. Russia, China and Iran have supported 
it, each for different reasons. The Russians opposed the West's calls to 
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intervene, which were grounded on human rights concerns, fearing that 
the proposed intervention was simply a subterfuge to extend Western 
power and that it would be used against them. The Chinese also supported 
the Syrians, in part for these same reasons. Both Moscow and Beijing 
hoped to avoid legitimizing Western pressure based on human rights 
considerations -- something they had each faced at one time or another. In 
addition, Russia and China wanted the United States in particular focused 
on the Middle East rather than on them. They would not have minded a 
military intervention that would have bogged down the United States, but 
the United States declined to give that to them. 
But the Russian and Chinese game was subtler than that. It focused on 
Iran. As we have argued, if the al Assad regime were to survive and were 
to be isolated from the West, it would be primarily dependent on Iran, its 
main patron. Iran had supplied trainers, special operations troops, supplies 
and money to sustain the regime. For Iran, the events in Syria represented 
a tremendous opportunity. Iran already held a powerful position in Iraq, 
not quite dominating it but heavily influencing it. If the al Assad regime 
survived and had Iranian support to thank for its survival, Syria would 
become even more dependent on Iran than was Iraq. This would shore up 
the Iranian position in Iraq, but more important, it would have created an 
Iranian sphere of influence stretching from western Afghanistan to 
Lebanon, where Hezbollah is an Iranian ally. 
The Russians and Chinese clearly understood that if this had happened, 
the United States would have had an intense interest in undermining the 
Iranian sphere of influence -- and would have had to devote massive 
resources to doing so. Russia and China benefitted greatly in the post-9/11 
world, when the United States was obsessed with the Islamic world and 
had little interest or resources to devote to China and Russia. With the end 
of the Afghanistan war looming, this respite seemed likely to end. 
Underwriting Iranian hegemony over a region that would inevitably draw 
the United States' attention was a low-cost, high-return strategy. 
The Chinese primarily provided political cover, keeping the Russians 
from having to operate alone diplomatically. They devoted no resources to 
the Syrian conflict but did continue to oppose sanctions against Iran and 
provided trade opportunities for Iran. The Russians made a much larger 
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commitment, providing material and political support to the al Assad 
regime. 
It seems the Russians began calculating the end for the regime some time 
ago. Russia continued to deliver ammunition and other supplies to Syria 
but pulled back on a delivery of helicopters. Several attempts to deliver 
the helicopters "failed" when British insurers of the ship pulled coverage. 
That was the reason the Russians gave for not delivering the helicopters, 
but obviously the Russians could have insured the ship themselves. They 
were backing off from supporting al Assad, their intelligence indicating 
trouble in Damascus. In the last few days the Russians have moved to the 
point where they had their ambassador to France suggest that the time had 
come for al Assad to leave -- then, of course, he denied having made the 
statement. 
A Strategic Blow to Iran 
As the Russians withdraw support, Iran is now left extremely exposed. 
There had been a sense of inevitability in Iran's rise in the region, 
particularly in the Arabian Peninsula. The decline of al Assad's regime is a 
strategic blow to the Iranians in two ways. First, the wide-reaching sphere 
of influence they were creating clearly won't happen now. Second, Iran 
will rapidly move from being an ascendant power to a power on the 
defensive. The place where this will become most apparent is in Iraq. For 
Iran, Iraq represents a fundamental national security interest. Having 
fought a bloody war with Iraq in the 1980s, the Iranians have an 
overriding interest in assuring that Iraq remains at least neutral and 
preferably pro-Iranian. While Iran was ascendant, Iraqi politicians felt that 
they had to be accommodating. However, in the same way that Syrian 
generals had to recalculate their positions, Iraqi politicians have to do the 
same. With sanctions -- whatever their effectiveness -- being imposed on 
Iran, and with Iran's position in Syria unraveling, the psychology in Iraq 
might change. This is particularly the case because of intensifying 
Turkish interest in Iraq. In recent days the Turks have announced plans for 
pipelines in Iraq to oil fields in the south and in the north. Turkish 
economic activity is intensifying. Turkey is the only regional power that 
can challenge Iran militarily. It uses that power against the Kurds in Iraq. 
But more to the point, if a country builds a pipeline, it must ensure access 
to it, either politically or militarily. Turkey does not want to militarily 
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involve itself in Iraq, but it does want political influence to guarantee its 
interests. Thus, just as the Iranians are in retreat, the Turks have an 
interest in, if not supplanting them, certainly supplementing them. 
The pressure on Iran is now intense, and it will be interesting to see the 
political consequences. There was consensus on the Syrian strategy, but 
with failure of the strategy, that consensus dissolves. This will have an 
impact inside of Iran, possibly even more than the sanctions. 
Governments have trouble managing reversals. 
Other Consequences 
From the American point of view, al Assad's decline opens two 
opportunities. First, its policy of no direct military intervention but 
unremitting political and, to a lesser extent, economic pressure appears to 
be working in this instance. More precisely, even if it had no effect, it will 
appear that it did, which will enhance the ability of the United States to 
influence events in other countries without actually having to intervene. 
Second, the current situation opens the door for a genuine balance of 
power in the region that does not require constant American intervention. 
One of the consequences of the events in Syria is that Turkey has had to 
reconsider its policy toward countries on its periphery. In the case of Iraq, 
Turkey has an interest in suppressing the Kurdistan Workers' Party 
militants who have taken refuge there and defending oil and other 
economic interests. Turkey's strategy is moving from avoiding all 
confrontations to avoiding major military commitments while pursuing its 
political interests. In the end, that means that Turkey will begin moving 
into a position of balancing Iran for its own interests in Iraq. This 
relieves the United States of the burden of containing Iran. We continue to 
regard the Iranian sphere of influence as a greater threat to American and 
regional interests than Iran's nuclear program. The decline of al Assad 
solves the major problem. It also increases the sense of vulnerability in 
Iran. Depending on how close they are to creating a deliverable nuclear 
weapon -- and our view is that they are not close -- the Iranians may feel it 
necessary to moderate their position. A major loser in this is Israel. 
Israel had maintained a clear understanding with the al Assad regime. If 
the al Assad regime restrained Hezbollah, Israel would have no objection 
to al Assad's dominating Lebanon. That agreement has frayed since the 
United States pushed al Assad's influence out of Lebanon in 2006. 
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Nevertheless, the Israelis preferred al Assad to the Sunnis -- until it 
appeared that the Iranians would dominate Syria. But the possibility of 
either an Islamist regime in Damascus or, more likely, Lebanese-style 
instability cannot please the Israelis. They are already experiencing 
jihadist threats in Sinai. The idea of having similar problems in Syria, 
where the other side of the border is the Galilee rather than the Negev, 
must make them nervous. 
But perhaps the most important losers will be Russia and China. Russia, 
like Iran, has suffered a significant setback in its foreign policy that will 
have psychological consequences. The situation in Syria has halted the 
foreign-policy momentum the Russians had built up. But more important, 
the Russian and Chinese hope has been that the United States would 
continue to treat them as secondary issues while it focused on the Middle 
East. The decline of al Assad and the resulting dynamic in the region 
increases the possibility that the United States can disengage from the 
region. This is not something the Russians or Chinese want, but in the 
end, they did not have the power to create the outcome in Syria that they 
had wanted. 
The strategy of the dominant power is to encourage a balance of power 
that contains threats without requiring direct intervention. This was the 
British strategy, but it has not been one that the United States has 
managed well. After the jihadist wars, there is a maturation under way in 
U.S. strategy. That means allowing the intrinsic dynamic in the region to 
work, intervening only as the final recourse. The events in Syria appear to 
be simply about the survival of the al Assad regime. But they have far 
greater significance in terms of limiting Iranian power, creating a local 
balance of power and freeing the United States to focus on global issues, 
including Russia and China. 
George Friedman is an American political scientist and author. He is the 
founder, chief intelligence officer, financial overseer, and CEO of the 
private intelligence corporation Stratfor He has authored several books, 
including The Next 100 Years, The Next Decade, America's Secret War, 
The Intelligence Edge, The Coming War With Japan and The Future of 
War. 
Artick 3. 
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TIME 
Syria: Five Syria Nightmares 
Tony Karon 
July 24, 2012 --
1. The Sectarian Bloodbath Continues, or Intensifies 
Renewed Arab offers of safe  passage for President Bashar Assad if he 
agrees to abdicate miss the point: his isn't simply a personality-cult 
regime; it survives because many thousands of Syrians remain willing to 
kill for Assad — or at least, to hold the rebellion at bay. Assad runs a 
system of minority rule that has empowered the Alawite minority, 
supported by Christians, Druze and other minorities and an elite from 
within the Sunni majority. And the reason the regime's core forces remain 
intact, able and willing to fight on despite the defection of many 
thousands of Sunni conscripts and even senior officers, is fear of their fate 
if the rebellion triumphs. The 18 months of violence that has killed as 
many as 19,000 Syrians and seen many thousands more wounded, 
tortured, raped and displaced may have helped make protracted violent 
retribution a self-fulfilling prophecy. 
That's why even if Assad were willing to go — and there's no sign that he 
is — those who have fought for his regime and now feel their backs to the 
wall are likely to remain armed, organized and willing to defend their turf 
at all costs. But a triumphant Sunni rebellion that has buried many 
thousands of "martyrs" would not tolerate armed enclaves of regime 
supporters in its midst. It's quite conceivable that a messy sectarian war 
will rage long after Assad loses meaningful control of Syria as a nation-
state. The obvious solution, in the minds of U.S. officials, is for the 
opposition to reach out and reassure Alawites, Christians and other 
minorities of their place in a post-Assad future. Far easier said than done. 
For one thing, there is no single credible political leadership center that 
speaks for the rebellion — and the fact that this condition persists some 
18 months into the uprising is a disturbing signal of prospects for stability 
after Assad goes. Western and Arab powers have spent more than a year 
trying to turn the exile-based Syrian National Council into a legitimate 
alternative national leadership, to no avail. It remains divided and 
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ineffectual, and lacks legitimacy among popular local opposition 
organizations on the ground. Nor does the SNC have any authority over 
the Free Syrian Army — itself a catch-all term for a wide array of 
localized military structures — or other insurgent groups, many of them 
openly sectarian. The absence of a coherent political leadership over the 
rebel militias raises the specter of chaos after Assad goes — exacerbated 
by the likelihood that the pro-regime Shabiha militias, whose thugs have 
the most to fear, would fight on, independent of central political 
leadership of their own. And the fact that unemployment among fighting-
age Syrians stands at 58% doesn't bode well for the prospects of 
demobilizing the armed formations that have waged the civil war. Foreign 
troops may be needed on the ground not to bring down Assad but to stop 
the violence after he is gone. But there are unlikely to be many takers for 
such a thankless mission. U.S. officials claim that progress had been 
made in getting exiles to agree broadly on terms of a transition. Given the 
status of the exile groups, that may not be especially reassuring. "The 
connections between the opposition and the Free Syrian Army are still 
tenuous, but they're getting better," a State Department official told 
McClatchy. "If we can get Assad and his cronies out, that will at least 
create an atmosphere to have a dialogue. That can't happen now." The 
problem, of course, is that the dialogue that begins after Assad goes could 
be conducted with bombs and bullets. 
2. Jihadists Fill the Post-Assad Vacuum 
The presence of an al-Qaeda-inspired element in the Syrian rebellion has 
long been established — U.S. intelligence concluded that some of the 
spectacular suicide bombings early on in Damascus were the work of such 
groups. And in response to a question in the German Parliament last week, 
it was revealed that Germany's intelligence service estimates that about 90 
bombings in Syria over the past six months were the work of 
"organizations that are close to al-Qaeda or jihadist groups." Al-Qaeda 
leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in February called on supporters in Lebanon, 
Jordan and Iraq to join the fight against Assad, and a number seem to have 
responded, with opportunities expanding as the Syrian state frays at the 
edges. Last weekend, AFP reported that a border crossing near Turkey had 
been taken over by some 150 foreign fighters proclaiming themselves 
loyal to al-Qaeda. Libya and Yemen are recent examples of how the 
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collapse of an authoritarian political order presents opportunities for 
jihadists to revive their fortunes, and they'll try to do the same in Syria. 
They're unlikely to take control of the rebellion, if the Iraqi experience is 
any example. By a number of accounts from on the ground, Sunni 
communities that have rebelled against the regime have resisted efforts by 
more ideologically extreme foreign fighters to impose themselves. Syria 
has a well-established national Islamist tradition of its own that is outside 
of al-Qaeda and unlikely to be drawn into that orbit — more akin to the 
mainstream Sunni insurgency in neighboring Iraq, with which the Sunni 
tribes of southeastern Syria are well integrated. Today the names, slogans 
and pronouncements of even many of the fighting units operating under 
the rubric of the Free Syrian Army appear to have an Islamist, and 
increasingly sectarian, hue. Even if foreign fighters fail to gain traction, 
the mainstream Sunni insurgency will likely have a strong Islamist 
component, which history suggests will grow rather than ebb as long as 
the fighting persists. The U.S. has deployed the CIA to southern Turkey 
to vet rebel groups receiving outside military assistance, hoping to favor 
those more palatable to Western preferences. The Administration insists it 
is not providing weapons to Syrian rebels, but it is helping with 
intelligence and other military-support functions. The arming and funding 
of the rebels is being undertaken primarily by U.S. allies Saudi Arabia, 
Qatar and Turkey. But given the regional cold war that all three are 
engaged in to greater or lesser extents against Iranian allies across the 
region, those powers may not share the extent of Washington's concern to 
avoid empowering sectarian Islamist groups. The Saudis have backed 
Sunni radicals in Lebanon and elsewhere, and Saudi Arabia and Turkey 
are the key backers of the Sunni-led political opposition to Iraq's Iran-
backed Shi'ite government. Moreover, the U.S. experience in Afghanistan 
in the 1980s should provide ample warning of how little influence 
Washington buys through the provision of weapons to insurgent groups. 
Even in the best-case scenario, the fall of Assad will likely boost Sunni 
radicals in neighboring countries. Indeed, Lebanon's Salafists have 
already been spurred into action, and a similar effect may be seen in Iraq. 
The wave of bombings in Baghdad and beyond on Monday may be a 
portent of some Iraqi Sunni insurgents, spurred by events in Syria, to try 
and reverse their defeat in that country's civil war. And there's no doubt 
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that Lebanese Sunni groups will see Assad's ouster as critically 
weakening Hizballah and therefore as an opportunity to reverse their own 
defeat at its hands. The instability that follows Assad's fall will be felt far 
beyond Syria's borders. 
3. Chemical Weapons Let Loose? 
The Assad regime's stocks of chemical weapons — developed decades 
ago ostensibly as a strategic hedge against the presumed nuclear 
capability of its prime enemy, Israel — have become an urgent focus of 
discussion among Western powers and Israel as the regime has begun to 
teeter. Fears that Assad would use such weapons to suppress a domestic 
rebellion may be overblown — they don't exactly lend themselves to 
urban combat, and Assad's conduct until now has suggested a keen sense 
of keeping the level of violence his regime unleashes below a threshold 
that would bring direct foreign intervention. Chemical weapons would not 
only cross that threshold but also almost certainly result in him seeing out 
his days in a prison cell at the Hague. President Obama on Monday 
warned Assad that he would be "held accountable" should those weapons 
be used. 
The chemical-weapons problem, however, may be more acute post-Assad. 
A senior Israeli official told Haaretz on Monday that Assad "is handling 
chemical weapons responsibly," taking steps to avoid them falling into 
rebel hands by moving them to more remote locations away from the 
fighting. Syria's Foreign Minister on Monday vowed that such weapons 
would be kept safe and used only in the event of "foreign aggression." 
Israel's concern, of course, is that should the regime fall, those weapons 
could find their way into the hands of Hizballah, Syria's longtime ally, or 
else be commandeered by jihadist elements in the rebel camp. The official 
told Haaretz that while there are no signs that Assad intends to move 
chemical weapons to Hizballah and is securing them from the rebels, 
"Israel is still very concerned because it is hard to know if these steps will 
be sufficient on the day Assad falls." Thus the irony: as long as Assad is 
in power, he can probably be relied on to refrain from using those 
weapons and keep them out of the hands of nonstate actors. But should 
the regime collapse precipitously, he'd be in no position to do so. And 
while the U.S. and Israel are weighing contingency plans to neutralize the 
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threat posed by those weapons, any such intervention carries plenty of 
additional political risk. 
4. Syria Breaks Up 
Given the sectarian lines on which Syria's power struggle is being waged, 
it's widely assumed that the regime won't simply shatter into smithereens 
when the rebels arrive at the gates of Assad's home. Instead, it's assumed 
that those fighting to keep Assad in power will, when forced by 
overwhelming odds to do so, retreat to more defensible lines from which 
they can protect themselves and their core communities. It's been widely 
noted that Alawites are moving in large numbers to their coastal heartland 
and that the pattern of communal violence in Sunni villages and towns 
that abut it suggest a process of ethnic cleansing to prepare the way. An 
Alawite coastal ministate that folds in the port cities of Latakia and Tartus, 
home to the Russian navy's key warmwater port, may not be viable in the 
long run, but that doesn't mean the regime's core won't try for one. Even 
before that, though, a scenario could emerge in which rival armed 
formations control adjacent territories, as occurred in Lebanon during its 
17-year civil war and during Iraq's civil war in 2006. 
None of those scenarios are sustainable outcomes, of course, but they 
could map the outlines of a next phase of warfare after Assad loses control 
of the Syrian state. But the Alawites aren't the only breakup threat. The 
consensus among Syria's Kurdish political factions, encouraged by Iraqi 
Kurd leader Massoud Barzani, who has hosted talks brokering agreement, 
is to keep their distance from the rebellion even as they take advantage of 
the regime's declining ability to control all of Syria by taking control of 
their own towns and cities. 
They won't necessarily push for independence, but their alignment with 
the political leadership in Iraqi Kurdistan — and reports that their fighters 
have already taken control of many key Syrian Kurdish cities — suggests 
that they may be staking out an autonomous zone similar to that of their 
Iraqi counterparts. Turkey, which is waging a ferocious war against its 
own separatist Kurds, will be particularly concerned about developments 
in Syria's Kurdish region, although Ankara's handling of Iraqi Kurdish 
autonomy suggests it may be more inclined to opt for a strategy of co-
option than of intervention. 
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Still, if the Alawites, Christians and Kurds all decline to embrace the 
rebellion, that would mean as many as 1 in 3 Syrians remain at odds with 
whatever new order replaces Assad. And that creates plenty of room for 
territorial political contests. 
5. What Happens in Syria Doesn't Stay in Syria 
Look at the map of the modern Middle East and what jumps out are the 
number of ruler-straight lines that describe the borders defining Syria and 
its neighbors Turkey, Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon and Israel. These nation-states 
were all invented less than a hundred years ago, on the drawing boards of 
France and Britain as they gerrymandered what became a series of 
minority-ruled states out of what had been a series of Ottoman provinces. 
The Sunni minority came to rule Iraq; the Alawites came to rule Syria; 
Lebanon was created to give Maronite Christians a state of their own, but 
they too were reduced to a minority and then lost power; Jordan's 
Hashemite monarchy ruled over a state whose majority today is 
Palestinian; and in the British colonial entity of Palestine, Jewish 
immigrants from Europe (who comprised about 45% of the population in 
1948) emerged in control. 
The U.S. invasion of Iraq ended Sunni minority rule and sent sectarian 
political shockwaves across the region. Shi'ite majority rule may have 
been the democratic outcome, but it was never accepted by Iraq's Sunnis 
or by their patrons in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. Sunni-Shi'ite tensions 
have simmered across the region, flaring up in Lebanon and Bahrain —
but Syria could prove to be a game changer. 
There are signs that Lebanon's fragile peace may not survive the fall of 
Assad, with Saudi-backed Sunni groups tempted to take the opportunity 
of Hizballah being weakened by the loss of its Syrian patron and arms 
supplier to break the Shi'ite movement's political and military dominance. 
Similarly, the defeated Sunnis of Iraq will take courage from the success 
of their kin across a border straddled by their tribal and clan networks to 
push back against the Iran-backed government of Prime Minister Nouri 
al-Maliki. 
Jordan's pro-Western monarchy is politically weak, and the same bleak 
economic outlook that drove many of Syria's rural Sunnis to rebellion 
prevails in much of the Jordanian hinterland. The triumph of an armed 
Sunni rebellion in Syria is likely to spur Jordan's Sunni Islamist 
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opposition — both its more moderate parliamentary arm and its more 
radical extremist element — to press their case, possibly fueled by an 
influx of refugees from Syria. 
Even Israel has little reason to enthuse about Assad's fall: his regime 
postured resistance and empowered Hizballah, but Israel's border with 
Syria had been stable for near on four decades under the Assads. 
Posturing resistance to Israel, in fact, was in part an ideological device 
through which an Alawite-dominated regime sought to legitimize itself in 
the eyes of the Sunni majority. Today, however, residents of Syria's 
massive Palestinian refugee camps appear to have thrown in their lot with 
the rebellion, and Hamas broke with Assad and left town last year. Even if 
concerns about chemical weapons or jihadists on the Golan fail to 
materialize, Israel could find itself living alongside a new, Sunni-led 
Syrian polity that, if anything, could be even more insistent than Assad 
had been on recovering the Golan, occupied by Israel since the 1967 war 
— and which Israel has no inclination to give up. 
When Assad falls, those straight lines on the maps drawn in the foreign 
offices of France and Britain in the 1920s will start to look even fuzzier 
than they already are. What happens in Syria is unlikely to stay in Syria. 
Anicle 4. 
Agence Global 
The Destruction of Syria 
Patrick Seale 
24 Jul 2012 -- Once one of the most solid states in the Middle East and a 
key pivot of the regional power structure, Syria is now facing wholesale 
destruction. The consequences of the unfolding drama are likely to be 
disastrous for Syria's territorial integrity, for the well-being of its 
population, for regional peace, and for the interests of external powers 
deeply involved in the crisis. 
The most immediate danger is that the fighting in Syria, together with the 
current severe pressure being put on Syria's Iranian ally, will provide the 
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spark for a wider conflagration from which no one will be immune. How 
did it come to this? Every actor in the crisis bears a share of responsibility. 
Syria is the victim of the fears and appetites of its enemies but also of its 
own leaders' mistakes. 
With hindsight, it can be seen that President Bashar al-Asad missed the 
chance to reform the tight security state he inherited in 2000 from his 
father. Instead of recognising -- and urgently addressing -- the thirst for 
political freedoms, personal dignity and economic opportunity which 
were the message of the `Damascus Spring' of his first year in power, he 
screwed the lid down ever more tightly. 
Suffocating controls over every aspect of Syrian society were reinforced, 
and made harder to bear by the blatant corruption and privileges of the 
few and the hardships suffered by the many. Physical repression became 
routine. Instead of cleaning up his security apparatus, curbing police 
brutality and improving prison conditions, he allowed them to remain as 
gruesome and deplorable as ever. Above all, over the past decade Bashar 
al-Asad and his close advisers failed to grasp the revolutionary potential 
of two key developments -- Syria's population explosion and the long-
term drought which the country suffered from 2006 to 2010, the worst in 
several hundred years. The first produced an army of semi-educated 
young people unable to find jobs; the second resulted in the forced exodus 
of hundreds of thousands of farmers from their parched fields to slums 
around the major cities. Herders in the north-east lost 85% of their 
livestock. It is estimated that by 2011, some two to three million Syrians 
had been driven into extreme poverty. No doubt climate change was 
responsible, but government neglect and incompetence contributed to the 
disaster. These two factors -- youth unemployment and rural disaffection 
-- were the prime motors of the uprising which spread like wildfire, once 
it was triggered by a brutal incident at Dar`a in March 2011. The foot-
soldiers of the uprising are unemployed urban youth and impoverished 
peasants. 
Could the regime have done something about it? Yes, it could. As early as 
2006-7, it could have alerted the world to the situation, devoted all 
available resources to urgent job creation, launched a massive relief 
programme for its stricken population and mobilised its citizens for these 
tasks. No doubt major international aid agencies and rich Gulf countries 
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would have helped had the plans been in place. Instead, the regime's gaze 
was distracted by external threats: by the Lebanese crisis of 2005 
following the assassination of Rafic Hariri; by Israel's bid to destroy 
Hizballah by its invasion of Lebanon in 2006; by its attack on Syria's 
nuclear facility in 2007; and by its bid to destroy Hamas in its murderous 
assault on Gaza in 2008-9. 
From the start of Bashar al-Asad's presidency, Syria has faced relentless 
efforts by Israel and its complicit American ally to bring down the so-
called `resistance axis' of Tehran-Damascus-Hizballah, which dared 
challenge the regional dominance of Israel and the United States. Syria 
had a narrow escape in 2003-4. Led by the Pentagon's Paul Wolfowitz, 
the pro-Israeli neo-cons embedded in President George W. Bush's 
administration were determined to reshape the region in Israel's and 
America's interest. Their first target was Saddam Hussein's Iraq, seen as a 
potential threat to Israel. Had the United States been successful in Iraq, 
Syria would have been next. Neither Iraq nor the United States has yet 
recovered from the catastrophic Iraqi war, of which Wolfowitz was the 
chief `architect'. 
Syria and its Iranian ally are once again under imminent threat. The 
United States and Israel make no secret of their goal to bring down both 
the Damascus and Tehran regimes. No doubt some Israeli strategists 
believe that it would be greatly to their country's advantage if Syria were 
dismembered and permanently weakened by the creation of a small Alawi 
state around the port-city of Latakia in the north-west, in much the same 
way as Iraq was dismembered and permanently weakened by the creation 
of the Kurdish Regional Government in the north of the country, with its 
capital at Irbil. It is not easy to be the neighbour of an expansionist and 
aggressive Jewish state, which believes that its security is best assured, 
not by making peace with its neighbours, but by subverting, destabilising 
and destroying them with the aid of American power. The United States 
and Israel are not Syria's only enemies. The Syrian Muslim Brothers have 
been dreaming of revenge ever since their attempt 30 years ago to topple 
Syria's secular Ba`thist regime by a campaign of terror was crushed by 
Hafiz al-Asad, Syria's President at the time. Today, the Muslim Brothers 
are repeating the mistake they made then by resorting to terror with the 
aid of foreign Salafists, including some Al-Qaida fighters flowing into 
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Syria from Iraq, Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan and other countries further 
afield. The liberal members of the Syrian opposition in exile, including 
several worthy academics and veteran opponents, are providing political 
cover for these more violent elements. Some Arab Gulf States persist in 
viewing the region through a sectarian prism. They are worried by Iran's 
alleged hegemonic ambitions. They are unhappy that Iraq -- once a Sunni 
power able to hold Iran in check -- is now under Shia leadership. Talk of 
an emerging `Shia Crescent' appears to threaten Sunni dominance. For 
these reasons they are funding and arming the Syrian rebels in the hope 
that bringing down the Syrian regime will sever Iran's ties with the Arab 
world. But this policy will simply prolong Syria's agony, claim the lives 
of some of its finest men and cause massive material damage. 
America, the dominant external power, has made many grievous policy 
blunders. Over the past several decades it failed to persuade its stubborn 
Israeli ally to make peace with the Palestinians, leading to peace with the 
whole Arab world. It embarked on catastrophic wars in Afghanistan and 
Iraq. It failed to reach a `grand bargain' with Iran which would have 
dispelled the spectre of war in the Gulf and stabilised the volatile region. 
And it is now quarrelling with Moscow and reviving the Cold War by 
sabotaging Kofi Annan's peace plan for Syria. 
There can be no military solution to the Syrian crisis. The only way out of 
the current nightmare is a ceasefire imposed on both sides, followed by a 
negotiation and the formation of a national government to oversee a 
transition. Only thus can Syria avoid wholesale destruction, which could 
take a generation or two to repair. 
Patrick Seale is a leading British writer on the Middle East. His latest 
book is The Struggle for Arab Independence: Riad el-Solh and the Makers 
of the Modern Middle East (Cambridge University Press). 
Afficic 5. 
NYT 
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The Candidates Talk Foreign Policy 
Editorial 
July 24, 2012 -- The presidential candidates took a break this week from 
talking about the economy, the most important issue in the election, and 
turned to foreign policy. This was a chance for Mitt Romney to show that 
he could be a better international leader than President Obama, who has 
already proved himself in that field. He fell far short. 
Mr. Romney spoke about foreign affairs on Tuesday to the Veterans of 
Foreign Wars, which Mr. Obama addressed on Monday. There was a 
contrast, but not in favor of Mr. Romney, who is still struggling to 
differentiate himself. Even some of his advisers, when interviewed, have 
been unable to explain exactly what he would do differently on many 
issues, and, where he does draw a line, his positions are mostly troubling 
or unconvincing. 
He has, for example, struggled to play down the simple fact that Mr. 
Obama ordered the killing of Osama bin Laden. He has tried to focus 
instead on how details became public, accusing the administration of 
politically motivated leaks. "It's a national security crisis," he told the 
V.F.W. With stunning overkill, he called for a special counsel to 
investigate an administration that has been more determined than most to 
find leakers. 
Mr. Romney seemed just as disingenuous when he tried to blame Mr. 
Obama for $500 billion in automatic spending cuts that the Pentagon is 
facing over the next 10 years, beginning in January. He called them "the 
president's radical cuts." In fact, it was Congressional Republicans who 
manufactured a crisis over the debt ceiling in 2010 and demanded passage 
of a budget bill that mandated the cuts to keep the government from 
defaulting. 
For months, Mr. Romney has criticized Mr. Obama for failing to halt 
Iran's nuclear program, disparaged negotiations between Tehran and the 
major powers and offered the hollow pledge that Iran will not have a 
nuclear weapon if he is president. In his speech, Mr. Romney seemed less 
hostile, saying "negotiations must secure full and unhindered access for 
inspections." He said Iran must halt all uranium enrichment but did not 
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say how he would enforce a demand often made by the United Nations 
Security Council. 
No one can predict if Mr. Obama's approach will yield a deal. He has had 
more success at rallying international support behind tougher sanctions —
including financial controls and an oil embargo — than his predecessor 
ever had. He has also helped Israel and Persian Gulf states boost their 
defenses and made clear that the option of using force is on the table. He 
has been much more willing to pursue engagement than Mr. Romney, who 
on Tuesday pledged to "use every means necessary to protect ourselves 
and the region and to prevent the worst from happening while there is still 
time." 
After suggesting for months that he might keep American forces in 
Afghanistan indefinitely, Mr. Romney said he would transition security to 
Afghan troops by the end of 2014, which Mr. Obama and NATO have 
already promised to do. He said he would rely on the advice of military 
commanders, as if Mr. Obama has not been doing just that. Given all the 
American lives and treasure expended over the past 12 years, it was a 
serious failure that he did not say more, including whether he would leave 
residual forces behind or how he would handle Afghanistan more broadly. 
Mr. Romney, who plans to visit Israel this week as well as Britain and 
Poland, is fighting hard for support from Jewish voters. He attacked Mr. 
Obama for "shabby treatment" of Israel. Relations between Mr. Obama 
and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are obviously tense. But the 
administration has backed Israel in almost every way, and Israeli leaders 
have publicly acknowledged that. 
Mr. Romney took some potshots at Russia (but dropped his absurd 
reference to Russia as the No. 1 geopolitical foe) and China. He ignored 
Pakistan, Syria and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He tried to sound stern 
toward Egypt, where the Muslim Brotherhood now runs the government, 
and said tough things like "I am not ashamed of American power." 
But, at this point, what he is offering voters on American security is 
neither impressive nor convincing. 
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