
The Coming War in the Middle East (2013) - aburan28
http://www.hoover.org/research/coming-war-middle-east
======
nickik
This is a pretty good article and worth a read for people who are not already
informed.

They were not completely correct. They seem to underestimate the stability and
staying power of Jordan. Both US and Israel help to make sure that Jordan is
protected. Stability of monarchies are typically underestimated.

Syria's government has not fallen, and Nusra (now Jabhat Fateh al-Sham) never
managed to unify the rebel to any great extend and build a real powerful land
and tax base. Thanks to Russia and Iran Syria is (very) slowly winning the
fight against the rebels.

Looking from Saudi Arabia into Yemen we see as somewhat different picture now.
Al Qaeda has a solid branch in Yemen but they have been very much infused into
the culture and politics of the region. They lack real reach and hitting power
for global jihad. They are to busy marrying tribal chiefs daughters and
smuggling (mostly gas).

The real issue for the Saudis in Yemen is not Al-Qaeda (who are in the South)
but rather the Hutti rebels that live right along the border to Saudi Arabia.
These guys have been extremely successful and Saudi Arabia does not like it at
all, they are spending Billions to fight them, much more then they spend to
fight Al-Qaeda in Yemen.

They seem to view the Hutti mostly as a Iranian Proxy (maybe future proxy)
even while the evidence for this is currently rather thin. The Hutti seem to
want Iranian support but the Iranians seem to think that even without much
direct support the Hutti are already doing a good job. Saudia Arabia is
spending money like nobody buissness and the Iranians handle the same conflict
with a tight budget.

Its the other way around in Iraq/Syria, there Iran is blowing the money and
the Saudis can be rather conservative.

One interesting thing for everybody to know is also the strong
decentralisation of Al-Quida, groups like ISIS and al-Sham (Nusra) do their
own thing now. Al-Quida in Yemen is also not a very good branch of Al-Quida
central.

~~~
pault
Slightly off topic: does anyone know of any forums/news aggregators of
comparable quality to the HN community (e.g. generally well informed, polite,
and strictly moderated/self-moderated) that focus on geopolitics?

~~~
finid
I'll like to know that too. Geopolitics is my thing, but haven't found a non-
partisan site to engage.

~~~
jwtadvice
Have you found a partisan site(s)?

------
ars
America should rescue civilians and force safe corridors to stay open, but
otherwise stay the hell out of there, and let them fight it out.

And yes, that includes ISIS! If the people who live there can not defeat ISIS
American help will not work long term.

~~~
saiya-jin
this advice should have been used and adhered to for last 50 years, and the
world would be truly much better place. what a dream...

~~~
ars
Sort of. Most of the time America intervened not for the benefit of the
locals, but for its own (or its allies) benefit (including as a proxy against
Russia).

It's harder to criticize that. It's bad for the locals, but America needs to
do what's good for America.

In this case though, it's entirely "for" the locals, so America should stay
out of it because it's not actually helping the locals.

~~~
enraged_camel
It's difficult to claim that America's actions in the Middle East and
elsewhere in the world have been good for America.

In fact, the only war America participated in that ended up being a net good
for America was World War 2, which resulted in the devastation of much of
Europe and allowed American industries to expand and advance virtually
unchallenged for almost 50 years.

The Vietnam War however was a disaster of epic proportions. So was the Iraq
War. The latter, instead of installing a friendly regime that guaranteed the
uninterrupted flow of cheap oil, resulted in even more instability in the
region, not to mention further radicalization of extremist forces. And things
continue to go downhill.

At the end of the day, it is worth understanding that America's wars benefit
only a small number of people in America: higher ups in the military-
industrial complex, the oil companies and the construction conglomerates. For
everyone else, it's a waste.

~~~
jwtadvice
The purpose of the Vietnam War, the Korean War, and the support of the
Afghanistan insurgency weren't intended to be net positives for the United
States. They were intended to be net negatives for the Soviet Union.

And they were. Now we have instable areas, but the US prevented the Soviet
Union from continuing to expand and collapsed it by overwhelming it with
military costs to stabilize its periphery.

In some circles that counts as a net positive to the US.

~~~
nickik
A net negative for the Soviets is a positive for the US. That is fair enough
but it does not mean that your statement is true.

The War in Vietnam was far more costly and destructive then any 'damage' that
was done to the Soviets. It was a absolute net lose in every way, money,
lives, credibility and so on. It was a major victory for communism and all
anti-imperialist colonialist struggles.

You are just repeating the same failed and disproven logic that people like
J.F. Dulles were advocating. They looked at everything in cold war terms,
black and white. The reality however is different. Just because some countries
are neutral or maybe communist does not make them automatically Soviet puppets
and the countries in the same region do not automatically fall to communism
because of that.

Had J.F. Dulles just accepted the situation in 1953 the US would have been in
a much better position during the cold war. Vietnam would not have been allied
with China and Russia against the US. The idea of "world communism" is a
fantasy that should not be a guid to policy.

> support of the Afghanistan insurgency

That was a great policy. Problem is just that even at the time people pointed
out that it was unlikely (almost impossible) that the Soviets would attack
threw Iran to the Golf. So there were no vital US interests at stack. The
Soviet, we now know, had no plans to do so, and not the capability.

In order to support the insurgency the US had to massively support Pakistan,
they ignored Pakistani spread of extremism, they ignored the Pakistani nuclear
program and the money flowed to the kind of insurgence that should not get
money, rather then to the moderate afghani nationalists that should have
gotten the money.

How people defend this policy in still today is insane to me. A nuclear
Pakistan and India is one of the greats dangers for nuclear war in the world
right now.

~~~
jwtadvice
> You are just repeating the same failed and disproven logic that people like
> J.F. Dulles were advocating.

I'm definitely repeating the logic of the state. To be clear here, this isn't
old logic attributable to Dulles or Eisenhower but the rationality behind
_current_ US strategy.

This military/security logic is consistent over the past 70 years of great
power struggle and I add it here not because I buy into all of the conclusions
but because the arguments must be understood from the perspective of policy
and decision makers in order for there to be a real dialogue between citizens
and the state. Namely, citizens have to acknowledge the paranoid and
aggressive tendencies of the state and understand reasoning from their
perspective to counter the arguments.

When this isn't the case (look at Libya and Syria) the state interprets
citizens' unhappiness to have to do with the number of soldiers killed (for
example) or the financial costs of insurgency and so pursues proxy wars,
support of terrorism, economic warfare, information warfare and other types of
irregular aggression.

Anyway, pretty much fully agreed with your reply here.

------
jwtadvice
This article is okay, but it misses much of the context.

For example it says: "Just as Al Qaeda in Iraq has ostensibly been fighting to
free Baghdad from what it calls heretical “Persian”—read “Shia”—domination,
the Nusrah Front today fights to free Syria from the supposedly heretical rule
of the nominally Shia Alawite regime of Bashar al Assad."

But then later posits: "If Al Qaeda/Nusrah can establish a base in Jordan,
Saudi Arabia will find itself threatened by Al Qaeda franchises on both north
and south that will be well-positioned to resume the pursuit of Al Qaeda’s
core goal of toppling the Saudi monarchy and “liberating” the holy cities of
Mecca and Medina."

Al Qaeda is and has been fighting a pan-Islamist fight to extricate foreign
influence - what it sees as continued colonialism - from the Arab World.

Interestingly, both the Ba-athists (Shia governments of Syria and Iraq) and Al
Qaeda claim to be fighting against the forces of foreign manipulation. The Ba-
athists approach it from a Pan-Arab manner rather than Pan-Islamist, but have
histories of Western support (indeed the Alawites in Syria were originally
militarily conceived by the French and the prior Sunni regime in Iraq
conceived by the British) that can spoil their claim to independence.

The article also misses the regional proxy war aspect, where Gulf Countries
and the United States have been arming proxy groups to achieve geostrategic
ends, such as the establishment of energy pipelines and determining the future
of Mediterranean access.

------
EGreg
And how do we as a civilization in the 21st century prevent foreign meddling
and funding of armed groups?

~~~
jalfresi
Stop funding and meddling with them?

~~~
mwfunk
Yes, but how? As an American I can try to vote for politicians that are
opposed to meddling in the region, but the most that would do is create a non-
meddling America. That's not going to affect the policies of other countries.
In fact, a non-meddling America would likely open the door for even more
meddling by countries like Russia. So: how? I really want to know.

~~~
clarry
I don't think Russia is interested in meddling.

If anything, it seems like a made up "threat" the US officials can use to
justify whatever the heck they're doing.

~~~
blahi
As somebody from Eastern Europe, I can assure you that Russia is most
definitely interested in meddling, controlling political parties, parliament,
almost all the newspapers, key industries, online comments and pretty much
everything in my country and I suspect the countries around me.

I know it is a joke, but I really have to say: THANKS OBAMA.

~~~
clarry
Which country is this? Where can I learn more about this type of meddling?

Anyway I think in this thread we were talking about direct military operations
or indirect actions through funding the training and arming of rebels or
freedom fighters or whatever. And the question was about middle east, not
eastern euorpe.

As opposed to trying to influence the political and economical decisions or
public opinion through "propaganda" or whatever the means?

------
keeganjw
This article should have a (2013) tag at the end of it. But yeah, the Hoover
Institute predicted this fight pretty damn well.

~~~
finid
It's easy to predict a war long after it has started. It's like predicting WW
II in 1942.

The Syrian war, which we have a heavy hand in - before and after it began,
started in 2011. That article was written in 2013. And did you check the bio
of the author.

It's easy to predict a war after it has started and when you have inside
knowledge and a hand in how the war should proceed and end.

~~~
ralmidani
The notion that the Syrian Revolution began with foreign (especially US)
meddling is absurd.

In 2011, the US was in the process of normalizing relations with the assad
regime. Obama had appointed a new ambassador the year before. Clinton thought
assad was a 'reformer.'

The war broke out for a very simple reason: assad's forces kept shooting
peaceful protesters.

Despite assad's violence, the Revolution remained largely peaceful for several
months. It became a full-blown war almost a year after it began, when it
became clear assad was not interested in reform, much less stopping the
killings.

~~~
finid
That's the official (US) narrative, and it's the real absurdity here.

You should find out how those "peaceful protests" started, and the activities
of the US ambassador to Syria just before the protests broke out. It's from
the same playbook that was used successfully in Libya and Ukraine, and almost
succeeded a few years ago in Cuba.

It's an interesting exercise if you have the time. Venezuela is in the same
neighborhood too.

~~~
hx87
That's the conspiracy theory narrative, and it's the real real absurdity here.
US ambassadors don't have the power to raise hell on the streets of any given
country, especially in one where a significant portion of the population have
long-standing and legitimate aggrievances against the current government.

~~~
ufmace
It's not a conspiracy theory so much as a oddly popular Chompsky-ite view of
foreign policy that can be summarized only a little tounge-in-cheek as:
America is somehow responsible for every bad thing that has ever happened
anywhere in the world. Nothing bad can happen anywhere without it somehow
being a result of something that America did.

Which serves to infantilize the entire population of every other country in
the world. See the GP's belief that apparently a few words by the US
Ambassador is more powerful than thousands of years of history and culture,
very difficult conflicts between religious sects, clans, and tribes, etc.

~~~
saganus
I was under the impression that it's not so much about America being
responsible for every bad thing in the world, but that historically America
has been taking advantage of those thousands of years of history, culture and
of course conflict, to their own benefit.

So if due to some political agenda there is profit or benefits to be reaped
from nudging certain conflicts this or that way, there's a high probability
that people in power would try to obtain said benefit. I think it's in that
sense that "America puts its nose into every conflict around the world".

Not saying that I agree or disagree with that view, but I do think it's a bit
naive to say that America is the root of all evil, as much as it's naive to
think that the most powerful nation in the world (for different definitions of
most powerful) would have no interest in other countries' conflicts or in
influencing them to their benefit.

In other words, if for whatever reason an escalation in the conflicts in Syria
or other parts of the Middle East (or the world for that matter) could benefit
the US, would it be so far-fetched to think that they would have a vested
interest in creating the conditions for that escalation to actually happen?

~~~
ufmace
I do think we're involved in some minor way in most conflicts, even if by not
doing anything at all. When you get this big and powerful and economically
interconnected, it's hard to completely ignore something - if you trading with
somebody is normal and economically necessary, then not trading with them is
an intervention.

The reasons behind any particular policy are of course complex. Some may be
for good and noble reasons, others for not so good reasons. A few turn out
well, many go badly or not at all as intended.

Many people in foreign countries even try to get us to intervene. Often they
want us to fund them or to suppress their enemies. Some want us to suppress
violence in other countries, just because they think we can - see Darfur.
Their motives aren't any cleaner or dirtier than ours are, just saying we
aren't uniquely or cartoonishly evil.

I think the important part to remember is that our real ability to change
things abroad is very limited indeed and fraught with risk. We can nudge
things a bit, sure. If a country is on the verge of civil war, we can maybe
nudge them towards it or away from it, but we can't create the war from
scratch, or control what the sides are. If they really want to fight, they
will, and we can't stop them. If they really have no desire to fight, we can't
make them. If we try to nudge, we may just cause the opposite thing to happen
instead. It's a mess, and it's likely to continue to be a mess no matter what
we do or don't do. There's always the hope that we can encourage things to be
a little bit less messy, but that may not be in the cards.

------
jwtadvice
[META]

A huge amount of disinformation in this thread, including people who are
pushing personal opinions and state narratives as fact.

Sad to see this on Hacker News.

~~~
finid
Well, exercise your privilege and correct them.

