By Brian E. Frydenborg (Twitter @bfry1981, LinkedIn, Facebook, Substack with exclusive informal content, my Linktree with all my public links/profiles) October 18, 2023 (*UPDATE late evening October 18/early AM October 19: further analysis on hospital explosion); *UPDATE October 31: I had some massive technical issues on my site, and an update to the Hospital explosion story mysteriously disappeared, so I have redone that update to include even more information that has been coming out since then about the responsibility for the explosion); all casualty figures are according to respective local officials unless otherwise noted.

(Arabic الترجمة العربية / Hebrew תרגום לעברית) The second article in a series of special reports about the 2023 Israel-Hamas-Middle East Crisis.

See related July 28, 2014 article The Israel-Hamas Gaza High-Stakes Poker Game of Death; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023, but I still need your help, please keep sharing my work and consider also donating! Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion. Also, Brian is running for U.S. Senate for Maryland and you can learn about his campaign here.

“How we choose to fight is just as important as what we fight for.”

—Ezra Bridger, Star Wars: Rebels

SILVER SPRING—As I wrote in my last piece, a level of violence has been perpetrated against the Jewish people not seen since the Holocaust and against Israelis like never before, a vile terrorist act by war criminals and legally constituting genocidal ethnic cleansing of an up-close-and-personal nature, in which an increasing toll of over 1,400 Israelis are now known to have been killed since October 7, the vast majority on that single day and defenseless civilians butchered in their homes or a at a peace-themed music and dance festival, in addition to over 4,200 wounded and some 200 hostages abducted into Gaza.

An Ugly Atmosphere but with Rays of Hope Thanks for Biden and Blinken

Obviously, emotions are running high and there are understandable calls for vengeance in the air in Israel.  But emotions and vengeance—and dehumanization—cannot be allowed to eclipse sensible policy that can bring about some of the best possible outcomes.  As America knows from its own “War on Terror,” in Israel’s current situation, counterproductive actions and mentalities will help no one, not Israelis, not Palestinians, not anyone else in the region except extremists who would bring about more death and destruction.  And keep in mind Gaza is one of the worst places anywhere to be conducting a military campaign as far as the 2.3 million local civilians are concerned: they cannot leave what has been called an “open-air prison” because of restrictions imposed by Israel—which, as I have noted in detail before, exercises much of the meaningful de facto sovereignty over the Gaza Strip—and Egypt, it is one of the most densely populated territories on earth, about half of the population is children, and the Palestinians in Gaza have been suffering from a humanitarian crisis for many years already.

Even considering, all this, Israel cannot tolerate a Hamas governing Gaza that is now trying to imitate ISIS, not after what Hamas did.

And so Israel must invade.

Unfortunately, already some 3,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed (before yesterday’s hospital bombing, discussed in measure 4), some 12,500 wounded, including whole families wiped out.  Those numbers are significantly increasing daily, with Israeli strikes still happening in the south of Gaza, right where Israel has told civilians to evacuate.  And while nobody knows how many Hamas members are included in those numbers, footage coming out of Gaza indicates most of the dead are civilians, especially as Hamas has access to its underground tunnel system that civilians do not and that many, perhaps most, Hamas dead would be buried underground in most strikes successfully targeting Hamas terrorists and fighters, therefore, many of them are likely not included in health officials’ body counts easily or quickly, if they even know there are tunnels underground in any given location, which they may not.

Yet even in this bleak atmosphere, I am heartened by U.S Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s shuttle diplomacy, President Joe Biden’s skilled behind-the-scenes engagement (as was the case with another Gaza flareup 2021), and other top Biden Administration officials’ diplomatic efforts.  In just days, they have already mitigated some of the worst: an initial, insane demand by Israel for all residents of the northern Gaza Strip—some 1.1 million people—to evacuate within twenty-four hours has seen that timeframe substantially extended (though it may still be a breach of international law, according to the United Nations), water service to Gaza has been partly restored by Israel (though from live interviews I saw on CNN two days ago, including with a senior United Nations humanitarian official, damage to the water infrastructure is so severe that only one of the main water pipes was functional, severely limiting the effect of the partial turning back on of the water supplied by Israel), and there is confused but progressing talks about opening the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt to get foreign nationals out, humanitarian supplies in (five United Nations fuel trucks two days ago were allowed through but that is it so far), and perhaps letting some other civilians out (in fact, just as I was wrapping parts of this article up Monday night in what may be a major diplomatic achievement, Blinken announced—after a marathon negotiation session with Netanyahu under Hamas rocket fire (such attacks being war crimes)—that Israel had agreed to the delivery of humanitarian aid, that safe zones for civilians were a major topic of discussion, and that Biden would be coming to Israel and Jordan today (the Jordan leg was canceled shortly after the hospital disaster, discussed in measure 4).  Biden’s trip may very well delay Israel’s near-inevitable assault on Gaza, giving more time for civilians to evacuate and supplies to be delivered to Gazans, saving many lives.

If you track the public statements of both Biden and Blinken, it is clear they have been and are emphasizing—will continue to emphasize—these concerns about protecting Palestinians in their discussions with Israeli leaders; clearly, Israel began on a harder line and clearly the U.S. has been pushing back behind the scenes against some of Israel’s worst impulses as in convulses in grief.  Biden specifically has been emphatic in repeatedly standing up for the vast majority of Gazan Palestinian civilians who are innocent and have nothing to do with Hamas and has even made clear on one of the flagship U.S. news programs, CBS’s 60 Minutes, that it would be a “mistake” for Israel to reoccupy Gaza in the long-term and right after reiterated U.S. support for a two-state solution, which would much displease Netanyahu as he has been against this his entire career in action whatever deceitful verbiage he has uttered to the contrary and still is.  There remain serious obstacles—especially after that hospital tragedy—but knowing Biden and Blinken leading Israel’s closest ally in America are clearly, forcefully, and consistently prioritizing saving Palestinian civilian lives in their private interactions with Israeli officials and their public comments on the crisis are a serious source of hope for me.

Hamas Must Be Neutralized, But Civilians in Gaza Must Be a Priority (and that Would HELP Israel)

Before proceeding, let us condemn Hamas and make it clear that for all their flaws, Israel and Israeli Prime Minister Benajmin Netanyahu and his extremist government of right-wing religious zealots and bigots—and I have been extremely critical of them, even examining Israel’s moral flaws in its military targeting and tactics in great detail—are not the moral equivalent of Hamas, a terrorist group that had for quite some time also functioned as something of a government in Gaza but that now has veered in its brutality into ISIS territory and is resembling ISIS in this brutality more than it resembles its own version of itself from five years ago.  And in recent polling, it is also clear that Hamas is not very popular with Palestinians.  During this latest violence, Hamas is even telling Gaza’s civilians not to evacuate, framing leaving as allowing Israel to push Palestinians from their homes, take more Palestinian land, and enact ethnic cleansing; Israel, the U.S., the UK, the EU, NATO, and others have long claimed that Hamas is cynically using innocent Palestinian civilians as human shields, purposefully putting them in harm’s way to get them killed to turn global opinion against Israel and/or lessen the intensity of Israel’s attacks (the Israel Defense Forces, or IDF, claims Hamas is blocking civilians from evacuating, though despite this claim, at least some 600,000 Palestinians have evacuated from the north as of a few days ago).  While some prominent human rights organizations and other analysts argue the reality is complicated when it comes to whether or not Hamas uses civilians as human shields, what is fairly clear is Hamas cannot be trusted to look after the safety and welfare of the innocent civilians of Gaza, and it will certainly fail in its responsibilities to them.

But this does not mean that Israel can simply dump the entirety of the responsibility for the welfare of Palestinian civilians in Gaza on Hamas, shrug its shoulders, and do anything it feels like at this particularly emotional moment, with the consciousness of the global Jewish community, not just Israeli Jews, reeling in its worst collective moment in close to 80 years.

In short, the worst anti-Jewish pogrom since the Holocaust cannot be answered by one of the worst mass displacements in a generation: currently some 1.1 million Gazans being told to evacuate northern Gaza by Israel, without anywhere really safe to go.  Israel’s tragedy cannot be followed by cutting off food, water, fuel, and power to 2.3 million Gazans, including thousands of wounded, 50,000 pregnant women with 5,000 due to give birth in the coming month, and babies in incubators in hospitals who will surely die without power, water, fuel, and food.  One war crime atrocity, no matter how vile, cannot be answered by another war crime.  And while there is certainly legitimate concern as to Hamas appropriating some of any aid that would go into Gaza, the solution cannot be for Israelis to simply throw up their hands and block all aid.  And especially as the U.S. is the main guarantor of international law globally along with the United Nations and that Israel tries to sell itself to the world as abiding by international law in comparison to Hamas, both risk looking like gross hypocrites if the U.S. stands by Israel as commits war crimes.

This would play into arguments and/or propaganda and gaslighting from Russia, China, and others (sometimes rooted in legitimate concerns, many that do not hold up to scrutiny) that international law is a joke and that the West only applies international law to its enemies, not itself.  It is in time like this, though, that international law matters most as ultimately, no matter how horrific a terrorist attack a country might suffer, the response when there are credible accusations of serious violations of international law and war crimes being committed by the responding party cannot be “But look at these pictures of our dead babies!  Let us violate the rules!”  Such an emotional response suggests that international law can simply be set aside when rage and grief arise in response to barbarity on the part of one party, but the point of international law is to ensure fewer dead babies and civilians of all types overall.  Pictures of one side’s dead babies cannot be used to justify illegal war crimes leading to more dead babies on the other side: there may an inevitability to some dead babies on that other side, but international law is there to minimize the amount.  The laws of war must be upheld by all parties that profess to adhere to them regardless of how low another warring party may sink.  Sadly, we cannot expect much from Hamas but it is to Israel’s credit that compliance and conduct of a far highest caliber than Hamas is expected of it, not an unfair double standard.  Hamas’s failure, then, to honor its moral and legal obligations is not an invitation or an excuse for Israel to abandon its own moral and legal obligations.  Because once we view international law protecting the most vulnerable of innocent civilians in war time as something to be tossed aside when one side engages in atrocities, international law truly is meaningless can protect no one consistently.  The only solution is to follow international law even if those we are fighting do not, to have it protect some people some of the time, rather than nobody any of the time.

Unlike Hamas, Israel is a legally legitimate nation recognized within its 1967 borders by over 160 nations (with 165 total offering some form of recognition: the U.S. under Trump extended recognition beyond the 1967 borders and recognized Syria’s Israeli-occupied Golan Heights as Israeli territory, something of  a pariah move).  I know some people don’t like the reality that Israel has long-been a recognized legitimate state under international law but tough, and while people are free to and can even reasonably disagree over the justice and morality of establishing Israel as a state and the manner in which that happened, that Israeli is a recognized international state is history: that ship has sailed and there is no time machine going back to before Israel became a state in 1948.  But the privilege of having statehood as a legitimate nation and a democracy (at least within its proper borders if obviously not in the West Bank) that is a signatory to the major human rights conventions, that comes with the responsibility that it is rightly expected to follow international law, that it can and should be expected to follow all international laws regarding civilians in wars zones and to be held to those standards.  Sadly, while the international community and especially Hamas’s backers can and should press Hamas to do the same, Hamas is a terrorist organization that has a modus operandi of defying international law.

While Israel itself has a questionable track record on international law, there is not an equivalent record between the Israeli government and Hamas: they are not moral equals, and after what Hamas pulled off in its insane attack on October 7, Hamas has signed its own death warrant: the status quo is over and Israel simply cannot tolerate Hamas’s existence right at its border and near its communities any longer.  Israeli must neutralize Hamas (and its mini-me, Palestinian Islamic Jihad), whether destroying it, taking prisoners, some sort of exile, or otherwise demilitarizing (and destroying seems to be the most likely option given Hamas’s posture).  As is the situation with Ukraine’s fight against Russian colonialist imperialism, the “give peace a chance/there need to be negotiations to stop the war” crowd does not understand the reality of how Hamas on October 7 moved itself beyond the pale of what Israel can tolerate, let alone make peace with, and the Israeli voting public would absolutely not accept leaving Hamas in power in Gaza even is in some fantasy world the current government did: the coalition would collapse and voters would put in a new one that would continue with the campaign to remove Hamas.

But that last point only refers to Hamas.  Conversely, Netanyahu’s lack of willingness to engage in real negotiations with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah party running the West Bank through the Palestinian Authority (PA): the de jure Palestinian government in the West Bank propped up by Israel’s much more sovereign de facto “governance” there through its military for well over half a century now.  Fatah has long renounced violence against Israel and cooperated with Israel to prevent terrorism against Israelis, making Netanyahu’s longtime willingness to boost Hamas as a way to undermine its rival Fatah even more shameful—Israel even helped to create Hamas decades ago to do just this—and, as I have noted before, Israel should be engaging with Fatah even now, should have been for years, and advancing Palestinian statehood.  By not doing this at all, Netanyahu has literally incentivized violence by punishing cooperation and nonviolence over many years, sending the message that occupation, dispossession, and privation are the makeup of Israel’s long-term plan “for” Palestinians, and making Abbas and the PA look like mere collaborators in the eyes of Palestinians.

While Israel has to remove Hamas from power in Gaza and that means there will be many innocent Palestinians killed in the crossfire, that does not mean “anything” goes as far as Israel’s conduct, that all safety for civilians is Hamas’s responsibility, or that there cannot be some sensible measures not currently being undertaken by Israel that will make the situation far better, save many Palestinian and some Israeli lives, and lead to a better outcome for Israel and Gaza.

With that in mind, here are my thoughts on some sensible, very possible, very practical steps that if adopted can minimize the worst of what is to come, keep international public opinion from turning even more against Israel than it would otherwise, and minimize the risk of protests in perhaps the West Bank other nearby countries like Jordan and Egypt from boiling over while also reducing the chance that actors like Hezbollah and Iran will enter the conflict in a major way.

My Six-Point-Plan for Mitigating the Horror that Is to Come

So my very first two recommendations are as follows: especially as Gaza is surrounded on three of four sides by Israel and is mostly dependent on Israel for water, electricity, fuel, and food by Israeli design, receiving those supplies at deeply insufficient levels for Gazans even before October 7 (since 2007, day-in, day-out, most Palestinians are malnourished and much of the day there is no power), 1.) the collective punishment of cutting off of water, power, fuel, and food to 2.3 million Gazan Palestinians must end.

Secondly, 2.) Israel must say loudly and unambiguously that the vast majority of noncombatant civilians who end up leaving northern Gaza or Gaza altogether will be allowed back into their homes in northern Gaza or Gaza overall (or what’s left what they left behind) shortly after the fighting stops, that there will be no mass expulsion of peaceful civilians, no ethnic cleansing, no mad pipe dreams that existed throughout Israeli history and in the mind of prominent rightist Israelis like former Prime Ministers Menachem Begin and Ariel Sharon, among other prominent Israelis even still today, to expel Palestinians into the barren Sinai Peninsula in Egypt and create a “Palestine” there.  This is actually one major reason why Egypt is so reluctant to open the Rafah border crossing to outgoing civilians in Gaza: they fear new refugee camps that will become long-term fixtures, that, left unaddressed, festered instability, insurgencies, civil war, and even terrorism like so many camps set up for Palestinians after 1948 and 1967).

Frankly, given Israel’s track record, that this or subsequent Israeli governments can change their mind or break their word, and the composition of much of the current extremist Israeli government (especially before this unity government), Egypt and others would be justified in doubting whatever assurances Israel would give regarding allowing fleeing Gazans to return:  in what is still regarded as a deeply controversial and illegal move (though quite understandable from Israel’s perspective), Israel has allowed very, very few Palestinian refugees who fled or were expelled in 1947-1949 and in 1967 to return, either to Israel or to the Palestinian territory Israel occupied in 1967.

That cannot be the situation with the current possible waves of flight within or out of Gaza.  I personally would not bet on most Gazans that might move into Sinai ever returning unless the U.S. can pressure Israel into agreeing beforehand that they would be allowed to return soon after the fighting stops (in a live CNN interview with the always-stellar Christiane Amanpour I saw two days ago while writing this, Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid declined to say whether Israel’s leadership would provide a guarantee that displaced Palestinians would be allowed to return to their homes of if he would support such a move).  And it may be temping for Israel to turn all of northern Gaza into a bulldozed buffer zone, but this, too, would be a war crime and illegal under international law, and would be cramming all of Gaza’s 2.3 million people—already in a Gaza that is one of the most densely populated places on earth—into roughly half the territory they were living in before.  This would turn an already intolerable living situation into one that would be catastrophic.

Related to the last measure, this is a conflict mainly between Israel and Hamas; Israeli is in no position, morally or legally, to impose the problem of Palestinian refugees on Egypt and dump the responsibility for accounting and planning for their welfare onto Egypt is a not a party directly involved in the conflict as a primary party but is one that has every right to suspect Israel will be wanting to permanently dump Palestinians from Gaza into Sinai.  Israel is deciding to clear out half of the Gaza Strip and to invade a Gaza from which they are not currently allowing anyone to exit from the three sides of Gaza it controls.  As a major party to the conflict and as the party forcing civilians out of their homes, Israel is just as responsible as Hamas for their welfare as one of the two major belligerent parties, and Hamas’s moral and legal failures do not absolve Israeli form its moral and legal responsibilities, nor are those responsibilities Egypt’s.

Yet I am only hearing that “Egypt should open the Rafah crossing” without any mention that Israel could open one or both of its crossings and set up temporary shelter in its territory.  The simple fact of the matter is the land and infrastructure in Israel surrounding Gaza is far more hospitable, connected, and resourced than the desolate Sinai peninsula near Rafah, that Israel is far more capable of hosting humanitarian operations and a series of temporary refugee camps, and—especially now that Hamas is boxed into Gaza—southern Israel near Gaza is far more secure that the anarchic Sinai Peninsula, which has for many years has been filled with untamed Islamic terrorist insurgents from al-Qaeda and more recently a branch of the Islamic State (ISIS, remember them?).  ISIS even famously used a soda-can bomb to take out a Russian civilian airliner over Sinai in 2015, killing 224 people.  Thus far, the Egyptian government has not been able to quell these insurgent terrorists, despite multiple attempts over the years.

Considering this, throwing a large number of Palestinians into refugee camps into the mix in Sinai would seem to be setting up a disaster for the future in an already volatile area, could lead to a destabilization of Egypt, and, should ISIS gain a presence in the camps and launch, say, rocket attacks into Israel with any frequency or intensity, could also lead to Israel striking into Egyptian territory in response in a repetitive cycle the like had developed in between Israel and Gaza up until this point, a disaster for the region that should be avoided at all costs by taking Sinai off the table as far as discussions of where to settle Gazan Palestinians, either temporarily or otherwise (indeed, the current ISIS franchise in the Sinai has fired rockets into southern Israel multiple times before, though to shruggable effect).

Israelis, ever lacking strategic thinking, would likely consider the problem more or less “solved” if they could pawn the Gazan Palestinian “problem” off onto Egypt, and be much happier worrying, but worrying less, about Palestinians in Egypt than Palestinians closer by in Gaza and would feel less incentive to move the refugees back into Gaza, perhaps playing the semantic games that come so easy to Netanyahu without ever getting to a point of moving Palestinians back into Gaza.  Tellingly, in an interview yesterday with the always-excellent Nic Robertson for CNN, an Israeli man living near Gaza in Sderot, hit hard by Hamas, called for transferring the Gazan Palestinians “into other Arab countries,” a view Robertson noted was “typical of many” there.

Conversely, if Palestinians were in camps in set up in southern Israel on the Gazan border, Israel would want to get the Palestinians there back into Gaza as soon as possible and not a day later.  The dynamics are far more likely to pressure parties into a far better result with the Israel camp option than the Sinai camp option, keeping the conflict and the bulk of responsibility for a competent, swift resolution with Israel and not dragging Egypt into it, which cannot even handle its own situation in the Sinai.  Therefore, 3.) Israel should allow several camps on its own territory neighboring Gaza for many of the civilians who want to exit Gaza, especially women and children (obviously military-age men are going to be more difficult to process but not impossible to at least partly screen).

And Israel does not need to deal with this alone: apart from the UN and NGOs that will certainly be willing to aid (and feel much more secure operating in Israel than the Sinai), Israel can and very much should bring in Abbas’s and Fatah’s PA.  There is obviously great concern about what is the plan is for Gaza after Hamas is defeated, as Israel clearly has none and is not shy about admitting this repeatedly publicly and privately, even to the Biden Administration despite U.S. pushback for not having such a plan.  After Netanyahu has spent so many years deliberately weakening and undermining the only major alternative to Hamas, allowing PA officials into these temporary camps can help the PA build credibility among Gazans up from its current crisis-low levels, allowing the idea of the PA moving into Gaza to govern after Hamas is defeated to actually be built in the hearts and minds of Gazans, bolstered by international and aid organizations (for all its issues, can anyone think of a better choice than the PA to fill this role?).

If a post-Hamas future for Gaza begins with Israel, the PA, and international partners working to the benefit of the Palestinian civilians of Gaza, that is about as good of a new start one can hope for.  Without Hamas as a player on the scene, the only good path forward that can lead to justice, safety, and freedom for large numbers of Israelis and Palestinians is one that immediately begins building up a new Palestinian partner in Gaza for self-rule and to restart life there.  And for this, the PA is the only realistic option in the here and now.  Flatly speaking, there cannot be a military solution to what is fundamentally a political problem, and such Israeli-PA political cooperation (as opposed to just security cooperation) is long overdue.  Gaza after Hamas is a good chance for this (along with the West Bank if restrictions are eased and settlers reigned in) and there is no sense in putting it off, which would risk a collapse of the PA while it and Abbas are at their nadir along with a radicalization of its members.

Quite nobly and bravely, some Palestinian doctors, nurses, and medical staff are pledging to stay in northern Gaza—in the hospitals there—dozens even paying with their lives, so as not to abandon their patients, including newborn babies, who will die if they leave.

Especially in light of this, quite sadly and horrifically, the al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza City in northern Gaza was struck by an explosive projectile in northern Gaza just as I was finishing this last night, with estimates in the dead ranging from roughly 300 to 500.  I’m not a weapons expert, but on the one hand, this confirmed video of the strike does not resemble other videos of misfired Palestinian rocket attacks, as the IDF claims caused the blast and deaths, and seems closer to resembling a video of an Israeli airstrike especially given the size of the explosion; but on the other hand, factors that can push the conclusion in the other direction are still being digested, such as a lack of a large impact crater, video footage of a Palestinian rocket exploding high above the hospital just before the explosion in question and showing the explosion from a distance immediately after, and that if it was a rocket that misfired, it would have had more fuel so early in its journey, resulting in a larger explosion than normal.  The fog of war is still enveloping this situation even if it has become a Rorschach test, with people expressing certainty before having the facts and the incident understandably inflaming the region, making Biden’s visit and diplomatic push far more challenging.  At first, I believed with strong confidence it was an Israeli airstrike, but most of the evidence put forth of the publicly verifiable type favors Israel’s explanation. Still, there is yet doubt and dispute about what happened as of the publishing of this article and I am not sure definitive proof has been presented.

*(UPDATE: Throughout the day more analysis has come through. Despite Israeli’s track record of being caught lying in prominent cases like this, as excellently discussed by CNN’s Christiane Amanpour here, the forensic evidence, from subsequent video to crater/blast analysis, points very strongly, perhaps overwhelmingly, to the conclusion that this explosion resulted from a misfired Palestinian rocket and was an accident. As for the audio presented by Israel purported to be Hamas, it may or may not be authentic; in our present age, this audio could very well be an edited or fabricated cherry that Israel is adorning to the top of its cake of evidence to help win the public relations war it is losing, and some experts have called the audio out as fake; so that and some other aspects of the Israeli narrative are far from perfect. The audio may possibly be a distortion or a lie, but the lack of a large crater and the confirmed video evidence is not. On the other side of things, there is no hard evidence that has been presented to be able to draw the conclusion that this was an Israeli airstrike. I have discussed Israel lying in the past myself, and indeed, a whole article could be written about that [Israel in the past lied about airstrikes, including an incident last year in which it claimed categorically as fact that a misfired Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket had killed 5 children, it being later reveled there were no rockets launched or falling near the children and they were actually killed by an Israeli airstrike; conversely, as documented by Amnesty International, both Hamas and Islamic Jihad lied and blamed Israel for two rocket misfires in a 2014 incident that killed 13 civilians—11 of them children—claiming they were killed by Israeli attacks; thus, it is wise to not take everything any of these parties to this conflict say at face value without scrutiny] but even if the audio is possibly not credible, the overall circumstantial evidence is credible and very strongly does not indicate an Israeli airstrike and does indicate a misfired Palestinian rocket, whether from Islamic Jihad or Hamas, was responsible, and without any substantive counterevidence, we must go in the direction of the existing evidence unless further substantive evidence changes the picture substantially.)

*(SECOND UPDATE) Since my last update, there have been multiple other independent investigations, most of which admit they can not make a definitive conclusion in the absence of an on-the-ground investigation.  Among the new investigations are ones from the AP and CNN, both of which concluded that a misfired Palestinian rocket was the most likely explanation behind the tragic explosion at the hospital.  The CNN investigation also allowed for the possibility of an IDF artillery round, but found that possibility less likely based on the available evidence.  I personally messaged the serially reliable CNN military analyst, Col. Cedric Leighton USAF (Ret.), to weigh in, and he echoed the CNN investigation in also offering his view that the available evidence strongly favored a misfired Palestinian rocket based on available evidence versus other explanations but also could not rule out an Israeli artillery shell.  The Washington Post’s own investigation corroborated Israel’s and the U.S. assessment that a failed Palestinian rocket was the best explanation.  Following up on its earlier investigation that also found a misfired Palestinian rocket the most likely explanation but cast doubt on details of both the official Palestinian and official Israeli narrative, the UK Channel 4’s more recent investigation found further evidence to discredit what seems to be doctored or altered audio released by Israel that it claimed to be of Hamas operatives and that also cate doubt on Israel’s account of the trajectory of what caused the explosion (likely exposing Israeli hasbara, Israel’s unique brand of information warfare trying to make Israel’s narrative more convincing than the evidence alone would make it).  A New York Times investigation disputed that videos that have been widely cited by other investigations as showing strong evidence that a misfired Palestinian rocket was responsible actually showed what those other investigators concluded, including the aforementioned; rather, it corroborated some other interpretations that stated the videos do not show a misfired Palestinian rocket, casting the situation into further confusion and intensifying the fog of war.  The UK-based Forensic Architecture presented its analysis conducted with partner organizations that presented seemingly decent analysis discrediting parts of the official Israeli narrative and favoring the theory that an Israeli artillery round caused the blast, but the organization also seemingly presents the problem of anti-Israeli bias in its presentation: it refers to the IDF as “IOF,” which stands for “Israel Occupation Forces,” “Israel Offense Forces,” or “Israel Offensive Forces;” IOF is a pejorative term that some critical of the IDF and Israeli policy towards Palestinians have taken upon themselves to use to replace IDF; I will simply say that I do not find North Korea, formally known as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and often referred to by the ensuing acronym DPRK, to be either democratic of belonging to the people; to use another Asian example, China’s army is named the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), but it is neither liberating anything, nor run by the people; in both cases, I do not invent cute if accurate pejorative terms based on my own views, I use the official terminology because that is how the world works in the realm of journalism and research organization, otherwise we could start renaming everything and retitling anyone based on how we personally feel about them; those that do rename based on personal views more than suggest the presence of bias.  Al Jazeera put forward its own investigation, but it comes off fairly propagandistic: it presents information it claims disproves that a Palestinian rocket was responsible, but it is not convincing or conclusive at all and does not actually provide any evidence it was an Israeli airstrike, not even addressing the issue of crater size.  For its part, Hamas has also not produced any evidence the blast was from an Israeli airstrike or Israeli artillery round.  Greatly adding to the confusion around this incident, there have also been glaring errors made by media outlets throughout this process, with few owning up to their errors and both governments and international organizations not adjusted their narratives to newly revealed facts.  And one independent analyst who has not received proper clarification after reaching out to multiple major outlets may have even exposed that the figure of 500 killed that supposedly came from the Hamas health ministry—a figure later seen as widely non-credible, though numbers coming out of Gaza from all the other violence are generally seen by aid organizations and the United Nations as largely credible—may have no specific confirmation or evidence supporting that such a claim was actually made. After reviewing all of these, my own view—given the preponderance of independent investigations’ conclusions and the indications of “high confidence” U.S. intelligence—is that a failed Palestinian rocket is still the most likely explanation, but I feel less confident in this conclusion given several other investigations that have different interpretations of video analysis and that it seems very likely both Hamas and the IDF are lying about certain aspects of this in addition to no definitive investigation having yet been conducted on the ground; thus, I went from being pretty convinced it was an Israeli airstrike, to being even more convinced it was a failed Palestinian rocket, to still favoring the Palestinian rocket theory with less confidence and more doubt/questions to be answered.

Your not-so-humble author here has little to add to this incredibly inspiring self-sacrifice of the medical staff or the horror of the still-staffed hospital being struck by some weapon to devastating effect.  With the staff, the concept of the Hippocratic Oath taken to such an extreme level will inspire long after this conflict.  The bottom line for the purposes of my article is that, hypothetically speaking, if it was an Israeli strike, such a situation is generally quite avoidable, especially given how large hospital complexes tend to be.  Yet it is far less avoidable with the current Israeli approach.

Their bravery and sacrifice of the medical staff and the helplessness of their patients mean that, despite the crimes of Hamas, these doctors and their patients deserve all the care Israel can take to save them.  Even if this situation was not the result of an Israeli strike—and I am not stating that is the case—the current approaches leave such a possibility wide open, even likely, to still happen.  To this end, 4.) I call on the IDF and other Israeli authorities to reach out directly to the administrators of the hospitals and to try to coordinate delivery of aid to the hospitals and to coordinate if possible the IDF securing the hospitals as safe zones for civilians and patients unable to be safely moved as well as for the medical staff tending to them.  To the degree that Hamas avoids using these hospital as defensive positions or staging areas, there is great opportunity for clear, careful, open coordination avoiding needless loss of life or IDF attacks at these hospitals.

Israel also has to be careful about provocations and incitement against Palestinians by leaders, politicians, settlers, police, soldiers, and perhaps even more normal civilians after such traumatizing events.  This has been a huge problem in Israeli society in recent years, with one of the most complex, top-of-society-to-the-bottom examples being the horrible events in 2014 leading to Palestinian teen Muhammad Abu Khdeir’s abduction and murder by being beaten and burned to death by Israeli settlers—a “price tag” revenge for the kidnapping and murder by Palestinians of three Israeli teens, Naftali Fraenkel, Gilad Shaar, and Eyal Yifrach—so heartbreakingly portrayed in the excellent HBO and Keshet (an Israeli TV station) joint-miniseries titled Our Boys.  The show was so revealing of the toxic and dangerous effects of Netanyahu’s style of politics and the warped ideology of many of his supporters that he even outrageously called the joint-Israeli production “anti-Semitic.”  This incident back in 2014 was part of the runup to the worst Israel-Hamas violence before the current fighting.

Yet there are many examples going back years before and years beyond that prolific one.  These include multiple acts of violence, terrorism, and murder against Palestinians by Israeli settlers acting with sheer impunity in the West Bank, including ambushing and killing a father and a son just days ago who were attending a funeral of four other Palestinians recently murdered by settlers.  Israel’s security forces had already been massively escalating the situation in the West Bank all year with provocative raids and arrests before October 7, too.  Overall, the violence earlier this year hit levels not seen in East Jerusalem and the West Bank—both occupied illegally by Israel from 1967 on—since 2005 and is only exploding further now after Hamas’s October 7 pogrom and Israel’s devastating assault on Gaza: 61 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, 1,250 wounded since October 7, destined to get worse especially after the Gaza City hospital horror. 

There are nonviolent issues that drive violence that must also be considered: just the additions to, expansions, and continued presence of illegal-under-international-law Israeli settlements in the West Bank on land that that is supposed to be Palestinian are themselves provocations, with the U.S. condemning Israeli settlement expansion moves multiple times just last month and also earlier this year repeatedly, a year that has seen Netanyahu’s unprecedented right-wing extremist government dramatically accelerate settlement expansion.  The recent eviction of Palestinians from their home in East Jerusalem so they can be replaced with Jews and even some recent displacement of Palestinians in the West Bank—textbook ethnic cleansing on a slow, small progression—also adds to the poisonous atmosphere and the feeling held by Palestinians that they are under constant siege and assault.  

Statements from too many Israelis are also incitement, even lawmakers and senior members of the current government, including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir—previously suspected and convicted, respectively, in Israeli legal cases of terrorism against Palestinians—Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and inciter-in-chief Netanyahu himself.  Such statements can even include denying the very identity of Palestinians as a distinct people and pushing for mass expulsion of Palestinians from their land or can surprisingly even recently come from Israel’s leftist figurehead president Isaac Herzog, and though he later walked back some of his worst remarks, he was clearly thinking what he said at the time. 

Additionally, the focus of Netanyahu’s multiple governments on normalization with Saudi Arabia and others while totally ignoring any political negotiations with the Palestinians, along with his recent predecessor Naftali Bennet pledging his government would literally do nothing to try to make political progress with Palestinians, were in themselves provocations because the clear subtext to Palestinians was that “You don’t matter and we don’t care about your political and nationalist aspirations at all,” an unsustainable illusion given false credence by a Trump-Kushner Abraham Accords that totally ignored Palestinian nationalist aspiration (I will be writing a whole article about this later).  And last but hardly least, the Israelis under Netanyahu’s new government have been provocative throughout the year at one of the holiest sites of Islam, the Al-Aqsa Mosque in East Jerusalem’s Old City, including in the days just before the Hamas pogrom on October 7.

Israel needs to put its best foot forward during its Gaza operation in regards to these incitements and provocations, which it is already failing to do, or risk blowback that will see more Israelis and Palestinians get killed and complicate what are already a complicated Gaza offensive and simmering, even now exploding, regional dynamics.

The key measures that must be taken here are that 5.) Israeli leaders must police and reign in officials engaging in hate-speech, the language of anti-Palestinian incitement, or ordering provocative security force deployments or actions at Al-Aqsa while prevent any settlement expansion in the West Bank or ethnic cleansing in East Jerusalem during this fighting in Gaza.  And they must not only prevent terrorist settler violence against Palestinians but must also prosecute any settlers guilty of such terrorism against Palestinians.

These first five measures absolutely will help to stem criticisms of “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” currently being leveled against Israel’s Gaza campaign, and they are prolific and not without meriting concern given some of the statements coming from Israeli quarters, discussed above (indeed, if the Palestinians leaving northern Gaza are not allowed to ever return, that would be the legal definitions of those accusations, and the damage to Israel for playing into the these legitimate criticisms would be considerable on the world stage).  Blunting such criticism with substantive action would not only be effective public relations and buttress Israel’s campaign against Hamas, it will actually save many innocent lives.

Finally, while there is rightly and emphatically condemnation of Hamas’s abduction of children among the hostages, there is an ugly truth that receives far too little attention: according to Save the Children (full in-depth report here), each year, Israel detains without civilian due process but through military authorities between roughly 500-1000 Palestinian children, most of whom are physically abused in custody, a large portion of whom are denied timely legal assistance access (often interrogated before any assistance), and many of whom are “denied a meaningful opportunity to defend themselves against allegations.”  Human Rights Watch also shows Israeli military authorities handling and detaining the children are regularly abusive and that they are often denied anything resembling an acceptable due process, with the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem showing more detailed figures and that Israeli authorities have not been transparent or forthcoming when it comes to inquiries about detained children. 

From various statements coming from official Israeli spokespeople, the rescue or exchange of the hostages taken by Hamas into Gaza seem to be taking a backseat to the desires of the Israeli government first and foremost to destroy Hamas, and, indeed, those two goals are largely incompatible; thus, it must be said this does not augur terribly well for the survival of the many Hamas hostages.  And while there is a current proposal that was just floated by Hamas offering to release all civilian hostages if Israel ceases airstrikes and would release all military hostages if Israel releases all Palestinian prisoners, this is ambitious and complicated and probably unlikely to be accepted.  Perhaps Israel offering to exchange the most vulnerable and least culpable prisoners in its custody—the children discussed above—in exchange for some or all the hostages in Gaza would put Hamas even more so on the defensive in the international arena for not acting on a legitimate, balanced, serious offer to exchange civilian life for civilian life, to free children and not all prisoners, including clear terrorists, from prison, so my last proposal is that 6.) Israel should offer to release all the children in its custody in exchange for at least the civilians held by Hamas.  It might not work but it doesn’t hurt as far as posturing and could put pressure on Hamas while showing that Israel is willing to explore ways to save hostages beyond military methods.  This would also be appreciated by many members of the Israeli public, who seem anecdotally in many, many interviews and from looking at social media posts of people I don’t know and people I know personally to at least seem to want Israel to prioritize getting the hostages free.

Conclusion: 6 High-Reward, Low-to-Moderate Risk Steps to Benefit Israelis and Palestinians Alike

As America’s Israel-whisperer, New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, noted repeatedly and emphatically, if Israel does not take measures like the ones I am suggesting into consideration and just hurtles itself into Gaza with the sole consideration of destroying Hamas rapidly, then it will be playing into the dreams and interests of Iran, Hezbollah, and all who wish Israel ill in the Middle East and beyond.  Getting drawn into a bloodbath in Gaza in which very doable, practical, and eminently possible measures to minimize civilian casualties and keep civilians fed, hydrated, and overflowing hospitals powered up are simply not taken or only minimally implemented is exactly what Iran, Hezbollah, and all of Israel’s enemies want to see or believe Israeli will do.  Like Friedman writes, Israel should be asking itself, “What do my worst enemies want me to do — and how can I do just the opposite?”  How can Israel prove the cynics and haters wrong?  Israel can hope to influence, but cannot control, the actions of other parties, but it can control its own.

The below picture is a of pair of twins who were just born in Gaza after their mother fled Israeli bombardment.  The world they grow up in—if they even survive—will be largely defined by what Israel and other states and factions decide and do in the coming days, weeks, and months.  If the measures I have suggested are adopted, there is a good chance worthy of a big bet that world will be less awful than if they are ignored, that the dynamics driving decades of conflict will be lessoned significantly by Israel in reducing its own contributions to them regardless of what its enemies do or do not do.  By seriously adopting these six measures, Israeli will serve its own interests and see the obstacles to peace weakened, the rays of hope largened and brightened, with a lot more people actually alive to see the improvement over time, not only many Palestinians, but also plenty of Israelis.

See all of Brian’s work on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict here.

© 2023 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Also see Brian’s eBook, A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia, or, Ukrainegate: A “New” Phase in the Trump-Russia Saga Made from Recycled Materials, available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook (preview here).

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By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Twitter @bfry1981, YouTube, Facebook)  December 24, 2020 (updated December 24-27 with additional sourcing); see June 7, 2021 follow-up special report Already in a Cyberwar with Russia, NATO Must Expand Article 5 to Include Cyberwarfare

SILVER SPRING—A note on terminology before proceeding: obviously, cyberwarfare consists of cyberattacks.  But cyberattacks can also very much be carried by criminals, hacking groups, or even a mischievous high school student against his own school district.  Cyberwarfare goes far beyond such attacks, and large-scale cyberattacks backed by governments or terrorist organizations might better be termed cyberassaults than cyberattacks, though both terms will be used herein since cyberattack is still by far the most common term, even if problematic for the reason just outlined.

A Brief, Selective, General History of Modern Cyberwarfare, Russia, and NATO

There have been no armed attacks against the territory of any North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Alliance member states by hostile governments since the inception of NATO in 1949, thought terrorists have carried out numerous armed attacks, 9/11 by far being the largest and most others being small in scale.  Thus, 9/11 is the only instance in NATO’s history in which its founding treaty’s Article 5 was invoked, which compels all member states to consider “an armed attack” against one state to “be considered an attack against them all” and for them all to come to its aid up to and “including the use of armed force.”

The NATO Alliance has served for over seventy years not only as a foundation of preventing armed attacks from Russia and other major powers against most of Europe and North America, but also a foundation of one of the most peaceful and prosperous eras in world history.  But there is one major type of warfare that has been hitting NATO member states intensely for years and increasingly so: cyberwarfare.  And virtually all cybercampaigns of this cyberwarfare have been waged by Russia, part of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s overall war against the West, especially NATO but also even Western democracy.

Apart from some Chinese hacking/cyberespionage known to have begun at least by 2003, the first two serious cyberassaults (in these cases carried out much more so as part of geopolitical cyberwarfare campaigns) were Hezbollah’s and Israel’s surprising cyberattacks against each other during their 2006 war and Russia’s less-surprising but far larger cybercampaign against NATO-member Estonia in 2007, just three years after it had joined the Alliance.  It was not long after that when it became clear Russia was absolutely a bad-faith actor with which we have needed, since the last years of the George W. Bush Administration and through the Obama and Trump Administrations, to take a much tougher stance, as I have argued before. 

Unsurprisingly, then, the two countries that have led in cyberwarfare since are Russia and China, the first being the weaker of the two but also NATO’s (and America’s) clearest top state enemy and the second being the overall stronger of the two, but more restrained and America’s clearest top state rival for global power and influence.  Though China has conducted its own massive hacking and espionage operations (not uncommon among major powers) and has its own influence operations, it is Russia that has without question been the dominant aggressor with acts far more hostile than hacking operations focused mainly on espionage.  In fact, Russia is unique among major powers in carrying out significant acts of hostile cyberwarfare beyond espionage ever since its Estonia campaign.  And while espionage against NATO states is bad for any of those states, espionage has long been viewed as separate from acts of war and should remain in a different category from acts of war in all but the most extreme of cases, a select level in which the latest Russian cybercampaign (detected to be only espionage so far even if at a historic level) seems begging to be included.

Since the Estonia campaign, Russia become dramatically more aggressive against NATO, often skillfully manipulating nationalisms (as I discussed recently) and flooding NATO member states with cyberwarfare, with election interference and boosting secessionism as common features.  Notable cybercampaigns have been directed at the United States, the United Kingdom (including the Scottish independence and Brexit referenda), Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Bulgaria, Norway, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, the Czech Republic, Canada, Turkey, Denmark, Romania, Poland, Slovakia, Montenegro, and even (North) Macedonia, unsurprisingly focused there on preventing its recent accession to NATO (and these do not even get into campaigns carried out beyond NATO territory). 

These cybercampaigns involve thousands of Russian government paid-trolls and Kremlin-created bots operating thousands of fake accounts that create millions of Tweets, comments, and posts.  And the way these operations tend to work is by promoting politicians and political parties coopted or compromised by or even favorable to Russia and Putin’s agenda and slamming their opponents or anyone critical of Russia and willing to stand up to Putin.

Many of the parties getting the most help (including funding) from Russia exhibit the same hackneyed brand of thoroughly boring right-wing ethnonationalism of the type embraced by Putin’s own United Russia party, which has in recent years forged alliances with several major political parties in Europe, including in major NATO states Italy, Germany, and France (and there are suspicions about the UK, where details of this remain redacted in the recent British parliamentary Russia report).  Similar political interference efforts are known to extend beyond  NATO countries.

Using its primary hybrid mix of disinformation, hacking, and propaganda, and with a network that combines top Kremlin figures, shadowy Russian government operatives, oligarchs in Putin’s pocket, and various state-linked media “outlets,” these operations have had far more effect than most people in NATO countries realize: helping to sway the views of many millions and dramatically distorting public discussion, politics, and policies in countries on everything from Ukraine (see the Hunter Biden “story,” for years a Russian disinformation campaign) and Syria to sanctions and even the current coronavirus pandemic. This model is skilled at preying on ignorance and confirmation bias to turn media outlets and citizens alike in these NATO states into Kremlin allies, whether as unwitting “useful idiots” or witting Fausts.  From Donald Trump and France’s Marine Le Pen and Brexit champion Nigel Farage to Fox News’ all-stars and “contrarian” journalists Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi, for a variety of reasons, extremists not only on the right but also on the left embrace or parrot Kremlin talking points and narratives after years of these effective influence operations, shaping debate from both within the halls of government power and newsrooms, corrupting and bending the debate to Russia’s ends.  Russian disinformation is thus vastly amplified and passed on further as misinformation by the duped and again as disinformation by the corrupted so that public opinion, media, and even laws and policies become more anti-NATO, more anti-EU, more anti-American, more pro-secession, more pro-Russia, more pro-Putin as a result.  And when the Kremlin’s candidates win, they and their allies may spout Russian disinformation to suit their ends, as former FBI counterintelligence agent Asha Rangappa explains is the case with the Trump Administration.  They can also can move to obstruct efforts to both investigate Russian infiltration and hold Russia accountable for its cyberwarfare, with clear and indisputable examples of late from the Trump Administration and Boris Johnson’s UK government as illustrated clearly in the Mueller report and the aforementioned British parliamentary report, respectively.  Even when the Kremlin’s chosen do not win, these Russian operations still manage to weaken their victorious opponents and skew political atmosphere.

All this has been the case to varying degrees from Washington to Rome, from London to Berlin, weakening NATO and its ability to collectively defend itself.  Over time, the degree to which the pendulum has swung to more pro-Russian positions and people has been nothing short of remarkable and very much in part because of Russia’s concerted cyberwarfare effort.  And all this further divides the Alliance and even member states’ own societies internally, which itself is also a major goal of Russia’s.

Time to Adapt NATO’s Article 5 for the Cyberwarfare Era

Thus, what Russia and the Soviet Union before it had been unable to do for decades with conventional armed forces Putin is now to a significant degree accomplishing through cyberwarfare.  And while the NATO Allice had been incredibly effective in preventing and deterring armed attacks, it has had a dismal record at preventing and deterring cyberattacks, a trend that is only increasingly so as Russia’s cyberassaults become more and more brazen, with Russia’s only-just-detected massive months-long and ongoing cyberespionage campaign (and perhaps much more than cyberespionage, we may discover over time) making this only pathetically more obvious.

While NATO’s Article 5 does not exclude cyberwarfare from being considered a pretext for a collective response, it has not been one in practice and the extreme lack of clarity or cohesion from NATO only has Russia acting on the cyberwarfare front with impunity.

To this end, cyberwarfare—including information warfare—must be explicitly included in Article 5, with “or cyberattack” added after the three instances of “armed attack” in the Article.

I will elaborate much more on how this will work in the future, but for now, even this brief historical overview of the intersection of NATO, Russia, and cyberwarfare makes obvious the dire need for a new approach for NATO to reinvigorate a domain of warfare that has been nothing but a grand embarrassment for the Alliance in the face of sustained Russian aggression.  Only with a new, clear, and bold policy that make cyberattacks as off limits as “armed attacks” can NATO continue to secure its members states as it has for most of its history and reverse its loss of power, prestige, and effectiveness Russia’s relentless cyberassaults have already initiated and inflicted.

See my June 7, 2021 follow-up special report Already in a Cyberwar with Russia, NATO Must Expand Article 5 to Include Cyberwarfare and my related article on the UK Parliament’s singularly excellent Russia report and my discussion as a member of a panel with author and Senior International Correspondent for The Guardian, Luke Harding, on Russia’s bad behavior

Also see Brian’s eBook, A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia, or, Ukrainegate: A “New” Phase in the Trump-Russia Saga Made from Recycled Materials, available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook (preview here), and be sure to check out Brian’s new podcast!

© 2020 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) May 26, 2020

This is a very complex, layered exploration, but patience in taking the time to go through these components to see how they fit together in the end will be rewarded. By looking at the history of biowarfare and bioterrorism, then looking at the history of our own failures at unconventional and asymmetric warfare and the patterns those failures reveal, we lay the groundwork for understanding both why the coronavirus pandemic is very similar to unconventional, asymmetric threats and why America has had such a spectacularly bad response to the coronavirus relative to many other countries. We can then understand how, even more terrifyingly, the coronavirus era has made bioweapons both more attractive to our enemies and more likely to be used by them, all this on top of the development of recent groundbreaking technology destroying so many barriers to making bioweapons and acquiring the material needed to do so. After that, we can understand how the coronavirus pandemic has exposed our weaknesses in ways that demonstrate how existentially vulnerable we are to anything worse, be it a natural pandemic or a man-made bioassault. Finally, we can see in the epilogue how all this comes together, including how history, coronavirus, and political warfare during the 2020 election are creating a true test for our democracy, our society, and our citizens, and how not only systemic structural shifts are necessary to protect our people and our democracy from these threats, but cultural and societal ones, too.

Bernard Lowe: We retired the two hosts in question.  You taught me how to make them, but not how hard it is to turn them off.

Dr. Robert Ford: You can’t play god without being acquainted with the devil.  There’s something else bothering you, Bernard.  I know how that head of yours works.

Lowe: The photograph alone couldn’t have caused that level of damage to Abernathy, not without some other, ah, outside interference.

Ford: You think it’s sabotage?  You imagine someone’s been diddling with our creations?

Lowe: It’s the simplest solution.

Ford: Ah, Mr. Ockam’s razor.  The problem, Bernard, is that what you and I do is…so complicated.  We practice witchcraft.  We speak the right words.  Then we create life itself…out of chaos.  William of Ockam was a 13th century monk.  He can’t help us now, Bernard.  He would have us burned at the stake.

—Westworld, “Chestnut,” Season 1, Episode 2 by Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy (2016)

SILVER SPRING—As the world witnesses the terrifying spiraling effects of the gaping void in competent early-intervention leadership in what looks to potentially and likely be the worst global pandemic since the misnamed 1918 “Spanish” flu killed as many as 100 million people (up to six percent of the world’s population at the time), perhaps the biggest fear we should harbor has little to do with actual coronavirus. 

Part of why this virus and its disease is so terrifying is that it is new and confounding, with varied effects.  It might roughly be thought of as a megaflu/superpneumonia-like whole body virus, but even that description does not do justice to the novel (i.e., new) coronavirus, also known as SARS-CoV-2, about which there is quite a lot (so much) we do not know and for which there is currently no vaccine and against which no vetted medicine has yet proven in rigorous testing to be effective, nor even safe to use (remdesivir, the antiviral drug seems to speed recovery from the virus and has just been given a special exception by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration [FDA] for emergency use, still has not been properly tested, has not been formally approved by the FDA, and may damage the liver).   Even with a viable vaccine in the future, this is a rapidly branching, evolving, and mutating virus, and the coronavirus family of viruses has proven exceptionally difficult for vaccines, with the FDA never having approved an effective human-use vaccine for any type of coronavirus.  In short, there is no guarantee that such an initial vaccine or any vaccine would provide mass protection anywhere near the degree to which we would hope.

Yet just imagine that the current disease rapidly spreading was actually far worse and far deadlier than COVID-19, the sickness brought about by coronavirus and now creating so many fatal complications for so many people and hospitalizing so many others all around the world. 

Such a mental exercise would hardly be just an act of imaginative fiction: Richard Preston—author of the famous 1990s bestselling seminal book The Hot Zone that awoke the national consciousness of America to the threat of emerging infectious diseases—and other numerous experts and public figures have raised the alarm about potential pandemics for years, with Preston himself just recently warning that the next pandemic could easily be worse than this current coronavirus one.

Going back to our thought experiment, now imagine this even worse disease ravaging humanity was no act of nature, but a deliberate act of war or terrorism.

The horrible reality is there are, in fact, far worse things out there that mother nature has in store for us than this coronavirus, and, even scarier, as is always the case, is man’s perversion of nature.  As Iain Pears wrote in his poetic novel The Dream of Scipio: “…we are worse than beasts. Animals are constrained by their limitations and their lack of imagination. We are not.”

And in this case of perverting nature, we are talking about the weaponization and modification of infectious diseases by humans—as servants of governments or terrorists—to kill people, many people, in no way discriminating between military and civilian, adult and child, strong or weak, healthy or sick.  And in a world where such a threat exists, and where a natural pandemic has exposed glaring weaknesses that must be addressed, a dramatic change in policy is warranted.

We do not have to even try hard imagine such malintent: as one example, the FBI has found that American white supremacists want to pass on this very coronavirus deliberately as a bioweapon to target groups they do not like, a clear form of terrorism.  U.S. defense and intelligence officials are also worried about a more organized potential effort to weaponize coronavirus.

Yet the biological threats that have been and could be used as deliberate weapons against us are hardly limited to our currently omnipresent SARS-CoV-2 strain of coronavirus.

And so, as with understanding any issue, a little history is in order, as biowarfare and bioterrorism does not begin or with the above example, nor, sadly, will it end with it.

I.) A Brief, Non-Comprehensive Survey of Bioweapons, Biowarfare, and Bioterrorism History

Like the medieval system before it, science is starting not to fit the world any more.  Science has attained so much power that its practical limits begin to be apparent.  Largely through science, billions of us live in one small world, densely packed and intercommunicating.  But science cannot help us decide what to do with that world, or how to live.  Science can make a nuclear reactor, but it cannot tell us not to build it.  Science can make pesticide, but cannot tell us not to use it.  And our world starts to seem polluted in fundamental ways-air, and water, and land-because of ungovernable science.  This much is obvious to everyone.

—Dr. Ian Malcolm, in Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park (1990)

Premodern Biowarfare

The weaponization of disease goes back to the ancient world.  The behavior of modern primitive tribes dabbing their arrows in decaying biological matter (animal or human), in part, indicates that even before recorded history, humans were likely deliberately trying to infect other humans as a tactic.

The first recorded example is in the fourteenth century B.C.E. with the ancient Hittites—the scourge of ancient Egypt—sending sick animals (rams) to their enemies’ lands the hopes of spreading sickness there.

Ancient Romans and Persians sometimes poisoned the wells of their enemies by dumping dead animals into the water, allowing sickness to spread.

The bubonic plague came to Europe because a Mongol-led army that had been suffering from plague in its siege in the mid-1340s of a Genovese-settlement in Crimea decided to turn their disadvantage to their advantage by catapulting their plague-riddled dead into the city.  When some of the Genovese, fearing the mysterious disease that was afflicting their city under siege, fled to Italy, they brought the plague with them and the rest is history, the history of the Black Death, which spread to all of Europe and had killed at least a third of the continent’s population, some twenty-five million people at a minimum).  The Mongol-led army using artillery to hurl those dead plague-ridden bodies at enemy forces in Crimea was “a landmark in the history of” biowarfare, a technique for which we have decent evidence of repetition a few subsequent times, including 1422 in by the Lithuanians in Bohemia and by the Russians against the Swedes in 1710 and 1718.

Another fairly unique historical example is closer to home.  Besieged by Chief Pontiac’s Native American warriors, it seems a British-led garrison defending Fort Pitt (now Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) in 1763 gave blankets infested with smallpox as “gifts” to the Native Americans with the intention of infecting them with the highly deadly disease for military purposes.  British forces apparently did something similar in 1789 in Australia with that continent’s Aborigines.

At the height of the U.S. Civil War, one rebel Southern agent (and future Kentucky governor)—Dr. Luke Blackburn, a medical doctor with serious expertise and experience in treating fellow fever—hatched and set in motion a plot to infect Union military positions, Northern cities, and even President Abraham Lincoln himself with the deadly disease by trying to pass on clothing and bedding of people who had suffered and perished from the disease.  The plot was unsuccessful since, at the time, it was not known that people’s fluids did not spread the fever and that mosquitos were the vehicle of transmission.  It seems smallpox may also have been involved, and that aspect might have killed one Union soldier.

Despite suspicions of other similar incidents, evidence is mainly scant for other deliberate uses of biological warfare from this period and the centuries just before and after, with suspicious incidents more often than not seeming to be natural in origin and not deliberate, despite accusations to the contrary.

Modern Biowarfare

Dr. Robert Ford: I don’t think God rested on the seventh day… I think he reveled in his creation knowing that someday it would all be destroyed.

—Westworld, “Les Écorchés,” Season 2, Episode 7 by Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy (2018)

It is in the twentieth century that we see the first large, organized, national-level government biowarfare programs.  Scientific advances in the late nineteenth century gave humans far more knowledge and ability to combat human disease but also to manipulate potential bioagents, including for military use.  Seeing what was to come, there were two international declarations coming out of Brussels in 1874 and 1899 banning the use of poison weapons on the battlefield, but there were no enforcing or inspections mechanisms. 

Germany during World War I by far had the biggest biowarfare program, though not much was put successfully to use as their culmination was in small and ineffective covert attacks targeting mainly animal populations crucial to war efforts in enemy nations using glanders and anthrax (a bacterial agent that can infect both people and animals but that is not contagious, i.e., able to spread person-to-person, so its spread is limited by where those using it as a weapon deploy it).  France engaged in research but did not attempt to implement any of it.

The use of chemical weapons on the battlefield during World War I—such as mustard gas, chlorine gas, and phosgene—produced a revulsion that led to have their use banned on the battlefield, along with that of bioweapons, with the 1925 ratification of the Geneva Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or Other Gases, and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare, though their research and production were not banned.  The Protocol also had no binding enforcement or verification provisions, but still, here, we had the first explicit ban on the use of bioweapons in war for signatories.

All the major powers in World War II would engage in bioweapons research programs, the Western Allies, in particular, investing energy into anthrax research and production.  These programs often focused more on targeting beasts of burden and livestock, which were still so crucial to both the transportation and feeding of armies.  The efforts were not a top priority, and a joint U.S.-UK-Canadian anthrax program was never finished.  Despite concerns of a German bioweapons program, it seems the Nazi regime never prioritized such weapons.

It was Imperial Japan’s government that, by far, had the most extensive program during the war, led by Imperial Army Units 731 and 100 and one that ran for years, staffed by thousands of people in twenty-six centers and performing live experiments on prisoners that killed thousands of them, testing twenty-five different bioagents to see the effects of diseases on both prisoners and even, without their knowledge, Chinese civilians.  Up to 600 prisoners were killed per year in bioagent testing at just one of these facilities.  Outside of the biowarfare facilities, the Japanese Imperial Army dumped cholera and typhus into over 1,000 wells in Chinese villages to study the effects of the diseases.  Japanese planes dropped plague-carrying fleas onto Chinese cities or had agents spread the same to Chinese rice fields and roads.  The effects were so devastating that plague outbreaks were still killing tens of thousands of Chinese several years after World War II had ended.  The Japanese also used bioagents against Soviet troops, but available information on the effects of these attacks are inconclusive and these attempts may have been ineffective.  At the very end of the war, Japan was exploring a plan to spread plague into California using submarines and Kamikaze pilots, but the war ended before the plan’s start date of September 22, 1945.  One major member of the program even published scientific articles on his “research” in respectable journals and just referred to the human victims as “monkeys” to hide the atrocities.  While the Soviets convicted some Japanese biowarfare program personnel of war crimes, the U.S. offered amnesty and freedom to all the relevant staff under their jurisdiction in exchange for the data on their experiments.

This brings us to the U.S. program, which became much more robust after World War II, though its main beginnings were at Fort Detrick, Maryland, in 1943.  Activity increased in response to the Korean War and grew rapidly over the next few decades, becoming quite robust, producing many tons of bioagents and weapons systems to deliver them.  This reflected the Cold War-era shift from bioweapons being conceived of more as tools of sabotage to weapons of mass destruction (WMD).  In particular, the U.S. Air Force would have some of its aircraft equipped with highly sophisticated aerosol delivery systems such that a single B-52 bomber attack run could spread a biological agent over some 10,000 square miles while other systems for fighter-bomber aircraft could disperse bioweapons over 25,000-50,000 square miles in a single run.  Besides lethal bioagents, incapacitating and anti-crop agents were also major priorities.  Production capacity at just one major facility—the Pine Bluff Arsenal—would be 650 tons of bacterial agent a month, though that level of production never occurred.

Though the U.S. program worked on a wide variety of bioagent research and weaponization, it seems to have focused more on bacterial agents.  In the 1950s and 1960s, mass tests were conducted on unsuspecting American civilian populations, and while the intention was to use harmless agents, sometimes complications produced casualties.  One of the largest examples of this involved the U.S. Navy dispersing into the air off the coast of San Francisco enormous quantities of what it though was a harmless bacteria—Serratia marcescens—over the course of nearly a week in September 1950.  The idea was to see the degree to how an enemy bioweapon might disperse and be spread by releasing it into the air off the coast of a major U.S. city.  The bacteria spread with and into San Francisco’s famous fog and saturated the whole metro area, exposing some 800,000 people heavily to the bacteria unbeknownst to them.  At least eleven people were hospitalized with major urinary tract infections and another man, recovering from prostate surgery, died from heart complications when the bacteria infected his heart valves.  The public would not learn of this test until 1976.  Another major test involved the New York City subway system in 1966.  These were only two of the largest out of hundreds of similar secret U.S. tests carried out on domestic public populations without their consent in the 1950s and 1960s.

Alarmed by the real possibility of biowarfare and the relative ease with which non-superpowers could develop and engage in it, American President Richard Nixon halted the U.S. offensive bioweapons program in 1969 and had the U.S. sign the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on their Destruction (BTWC or BWC) in 1972.  The Convention banned the use of biological and chemical weapons and bioweapons research.  Signatories also committed to destroying their existing bioweapons stockpiles and were prohibited from researching offensive dispersal technologies, though there were no enforced verification or control mechanisms.  Over 100 other nations initially signed along with the U.S., including the Soviet Union, and today, almost every nation in the world is a signatory.

But even as the Soviet Union signed the treaty, it was secretly ramping up its own biowarfare program into overdrive.  The Soviets had had an offensive biowarfare program going back to the 1920s, which greatly expanded in the 1930s and may have approached the Japanese program in scale, but it seems Soviet leader Joseph Stalin’s purges disrupted it.  There is a small number of unverified claims of Soviet use of bioweapons in World War II as well as similar theories that Soviet-backed partisan guerrillas that used bioagents against occupying Germans obtained their bioweapons from the Soviets.  Additionally, it seems some Soviet agents spread typhus-carrying lice in a German-occupied Ukrainian town.  These operations killed dozens of Germans, but, still, in general and certainly compared to the Japanese, Soviet use of biological weapons during the war seems extremely rare and of minimal impact.

The USSR took biowarfare experts from Japan (like the U.S.) and industrial equipment from Germany as booty from the Second World War to help advance their program.  As the Korean War approached and unfolded, Stalin worried that the increasing U.S. bioweapons program would be a real threat to the Soviets, and they continued to lag behind the U.S. likely until the 1970s.  In early post-Cold War years, the Soviets developed weapons programs targeting crop and livestock and even developed sophisticated assassination methods with bioagents.  There was even a plan to assassinate Yugoslavia’s leader Josip Broz Tito using plague, but Stalin died before the plot was carried out.  During this period, fear of the U.S. bioweapons program motivated the Soviets to create a robust system to help spot and stop outbreaks of infectious diseases.

Still, in part because of its subscribing to incorrect biological scientific theories and a stifling bureaucracy, not much seemed to have progressed with the Soviet biowarfare program in the decades after World War II.  Soviet leaders, aware they were lagging behind the U.S., finally deferred to scientific experts (with correct, Western scientific theories backing their thinking) and decided to launch a major new biowarfare program, Biopreparat, that would take off just as the U.S. was winding its program down.  Thus, beginning in the 1970s, Biopreparat became the largest, most advanced biowarfare program in the history of the world, employing up to 60,000 people at its height; the civilian side of the program alone would end up having “10 research and development institutes, 14 production and mobilization plants, and 8 special weapons and facility design units,” and, combined with its military facilities, Biopreparat was capable of producing several thousand tons of biological agents per year.  The program developed technology to have plague, anthrax, and smallpox placed in intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBSMs)—with smallpox, maintaining a constantly refreshed egg-incubated stockpile of twenty tons—keeping some weapons loaded with agents and ready to be deployed or launched, and had the capacity to produce 1,800 tons of anthrax annually.  Overall, Biopreparat worked with about fifty different bioagents, including the highly deadly Ebola-like Marburg virus. 

Perhaps most disturbingly, the Soviet biowarfare program even engaged in genetic engineering to create new strains of existing diseases that would be stronger and resist known treatment—man-made super-strains of anthrax, plague, tularemia, smallpox, and others—as well as new agents altogether, combining some of the worst aspects of multiple diseases; by 1991, the program was researching adding genes from Venezuelan equine encephalitis, Ebola, and Marburg into smallpox.

The highly secretive Soviet Biopreparat program was unknown to U.S. intelligence until a member of the program defected to the West in 1989, two others following in 1992, the third being the second-in-command of Biopreparat, who had become terrified of what his program could unleash on the world.

After these revelations, Russia (the Soviet Union was now in the dustbin of history) admitted it had carried out a program in violation of the 1972 BWC treaty and President Boris Yeltsin pledged to end the program, but his pledge was quite controversial within Russian power circles and he faced stiff opposition.  Just a few years later, Russia was backing off some its admissions, and after Vladimir Putin ascended to the Russian presidency in 1999, he changed the official policy of Russia to one that actively and specifically denied that the Soviet Union or Russia has ever had an offensive biowarfare program. 

Russia, then, simply has not come clean on its biowarfare program.  Putin himself even publicly called for developing “genetic” weapons in 2012, and, since then, there has been a frenzy of construction activity at over two dozen old biowarfare program sites, which still remain as secretive and sealed-off as they were during Soviet times.  To this day, little is known about what became of the massive Biopreparat program or its enormous stockpiles.  Even in 2016, the Obama Administration was noting that Russia still had not come clean about what it had done with its biological stockpiles and delivery systems, and it is hard to believe that Russia is not violating the 1972 BWC treaty even today.  Furthermore, with serious security issues at Russian installations and with the immediate 1990s in Russia being something of an insanely chaotic, corrupt Wild West-like environment where it would hardly have been unthinkable that money and bioagents changed hands, we have no way of knowing which struggling scientists might have smuggled bioagents or their designs to which buyers, let alone where elements of Russia’s biological weapons stockpile are today.

In fact, some of the Soviet Union’s smallpox cache seems to have somehow gotten lost and made its way to North Korea during the tumultuous time of the USSR’s final collapse.  And a U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency report from 1994 stated that in the late 1980s or early 1990, the USSR or Russia had supplied North Korea with smallpox, too, which may or not be the same as the stocks of which Russia apparently lost track.  But that rogue nation would also have had its own stocks (though likely less potent) as part of its suspected longstanding biowarfare program, decades old but one about which few concrete details are known due to the secretive and sealed-off nature of the regime.  Despite this lack of information, many experts contend North Korea’s biowarfare program is a substantial and advanced one, and it seems the government of the country’s leader, Kim Jong-Un (if he is still leading, or even alive, amid his current disappearance) is trying to expand its program and bioweapons research and production capabilities.  One North Korean soldier who defected a few years ago tested positive for anthrax antibodies, suggesting (though not proving) the possibility anthrax is an active part of its arsenal.  North Korea’s military is thought to be vaccinated for both smallpox and anthrax, making both those potential bioweapons attractive to them.  And our own troops stationed in South Korea (and in general) are, overall, underequipped and unprepared for a biowarfare attack.  Experts believe the government is more likely to use bioweapons than nuclear ones and, the volatile, desperate, risky, unconventional, and sometimes unpredictable nature of the North Korean regime mean its bioweapons program may be one of the world’s programs that poses the largest threat, not least because a desperate and cash-strapped North Korean government could be willing to sell parts of this program and bioweapons expertise in general to other rogue regimes or non-state terrorist groups (it has supported terrorism across the world in the past), as it has already done with its chemical and nuclear programs and related expertise for Syria, which is also is known to have a bioweapons program.

As for other countries, a number had programs rise and fall during the Cold War, and other have clear capabilities of having or jumpstarting a program even if no evidence exists that they current do have a program.  Others still have programs today: Israel, for example, has long had a bioweapons program, but very few details are known about its current status.  China is thought to also have a program, but likely a small one and practically nothing is known about it, with experts emphasizing China’s dual-use capabilities more than actually any robust current program.  Iran is in a similar category.

It is notable that Iraq had a robust program for a number of years not too long ago under Saddam Hussein, one about which we know a lot and that really kicked into high developmental gear from the middle of the Iran-Iraq War until the Gulf War and subsequent demands and inspections from the powers who defeated Saddam’s government and severely disrupted his program at its peak.  At that peak, the program was in its early stages of being operational, but it does not seem the regime ever used its bioweapons.  The earlier DIA assessment from 1994 that concluded Russia had supplied North Korea with smallpox concluded Russia had also supplied Iraq with the virus around the same time, but Iraq likely also had its own stocks and there is evidence supporting the idea it was weaponizing smallpox, perhaps using camelpox research as a cover.  Until the mid-1990s, even under the scrutiny of international inspections, the regime was still trying to salvage its program, but after renewed and intensified international actions, Hussein’s government in 1996 may have largely abandoned serious efforts to reconstitute its biowarfare program.  The post-Saddam era has thankfully seen Iraqi governments that have abandoned all WMD pursuits.

Bioterrorism

I’ll tell you the problem with engineers and scientists.  Scientists have an elaborate line of bullshit about how they are seeking to know the truth about nature.  Which is true, but that’s not what drives them. Nobody is driven by abstractions like “seeking truth.”

Scientists are actually preoccupied with accomplishment.  So they are focused on whether they can do something.  They never stop to ask if they should do something.  They conveniently define such considerations as pointless.  If they don’t do it, someone else will.  Discovery, they believe, is inevitable.  So they just try to do it first.  That’s the game in science. Even pure scientific discovery is an aggressive, penetrative act.  It takes big equipment, and it literally changes the world afterward.  Particle accelerators sear the land, and leave radioactive byproducts.  Astronauts leave trash on the moon.  There is always some proof that scientists were there, making their discoveries.  Discovery is always a rape of the natural world. Always.

The scientists want it that way.  They have to stick their instruments in.  They have to leave their mark. They can’t just watch.  They can’t just appreciate.  They can’t just fit into the natural order. They have to make something unnatural happen.  That is the scientist’s job, and now we have whole societies that try to be scientific.

—Dr. Ian Malcolm, in Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park (1990)

Besides states, there are, of course, the terrorists seeking to develop and use these weapons.

Besides the occasional partisans/guerillas who, as mentioned, used bioweapons against occupying German troops during World War II, there are, thankfully, only a few major examples of bioterrorism in general throughout history.  In the modern era, there is the strange case of a religious cult in America deliberately poisoning restaurant salad bars with Salmonella in Oregon in 1984, sickening hundreds of people, dozens of them seriously.  While Japan’s Aum Shinrikyo cult is famous for its sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995, it was also planning to carry out biological attacks before those plots were discovered and foiled.

Just after the September 11^th, 2001 al-Qaeda attacks in the U.S., there was the strange incident of the anthrax mail attacks that infected twenty-two people and killed five.  The case was quite murky and the best available explanation is that the attacks seems to have been an example of domestic terrorism by particular a government scientist who was an expert on, and worked with, anthrax, one who committed suicide and whose possible motives have not been definitively determined by investigators but that most likely would seem to have amounted to creating a false flag attack to raise awareness about bioterrorism and boost funding for biodefense.  Even so, the evidence is far from conclusive and some questions remains as to the identity of the terrorist(s), let alone any motives.

Al-Qaeda itself harbored serious ambitions for developing bioweapons capabilities, in particular one major plot in the years before 9/11 focusing on anthrax to carry out a large-scale attack on U.S. soil run by the organization’s second-in-command (and still current leader), the surgeon Ayman al-Zawahiri.  In the months prior to the 9/11 attacks, multiple al-Qaeda operatives were looking into crop-dusting airplanes, a tool that would make an exceptional delivery mechanism for a bioagent.  One of these operatives was Mohammad Atta, a 9/11 ringleader and a successful hijacker on 9/11, who was trying to get a loan to buy a crop duster in Florida but was rejected.  Another was Zacarias Moussaoui, caught before 9/11 and later convicted in court on 9/11 related terrorism charges, thought to maybe be designated as a hijacker (possibly of another plane that was supposed to hit the White House) but also perhaps, instead, to have been tasked with carrying out other attacks after 9/11.  An associate of Moussaoui’s who entered the U.S. with him was detained in possession of biology textbooks while Moussaoui had in his possession crop-dusting aircraft manuals.

After the 9/11 attacks, U.S. forces in Afghanistan would destroy what U.S. intelligence officials said was an under-construction facility to produce anthrax in Kandahar, and anthrax powder was found in Zawahiri’s house in the country.  Zawahiri had even recruited a Pakistani government scientist to work on advancing al-Qaeda’s bioweapons program at that Kandahar lab.  Extremist nuclear scientists in Pakistan also formed an NGO (with a former head of Pakistan’s notoriously-extremist-sympathizing ISI intelligence service and a former head of Pakistan’s Khushab nuclear reactor on its board) that was a front for supporting terrorists, including al-Qaeda and, specifically, bioterrorism plans were found in the organization’s office in Kabul shortly after 9/11.  Al-Qaeda also had a cell in Saudi Arabia that was planning biological attacks.

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s al-Qaeda affiliate, al-Qaeda in Iraq/Mesopotamia—which would later, during the Iraq War, evolve into ISIS—was even trying to develop, train with, and use bioweapons before the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq.

More recently, in 2014, a laptop that belonged to an ISIS operative with an academic background in science was apparently recovered from an ISIS safehouse.  Files on the computer showed the group was putting energy into looking at developing bioweapons and carrying out bioterrorist attacks, with specific documents outlining techniques for testing agents and carrying out attacks in public areas, directing that biological agents be disseminated into the air using air conditioning systems, and explaining how to weaponize plague.  There was also discussion of theological justifications for biological attacks and of the advantages of biological weapons being cheap to create and able to kill large numbers of people.  While its “caliphate” was at its height, ISIS even established a lab in Mosul for chemical and biological weapons research and development that employed a team of scientific experts dedicated to the cause.

Additionally, Kenyan police stopped a anthrax plot with big ambitions in 2016 concocted by an ISIS-linked terror group.  And in 2018, a Lebanese citizen was arrested by anti-terrorism police in Italy for plotting a terrorist attack that would have included anthrax he was seeking to obtain, taking ISIS for inspiration.  Overall, European officials worry that ISIS attacks utilizing bioagents are being planned for European targets and could be executed soon, perhaps even using drones.

Having looked at the unconventional bioweapons ambitions arrayed against us, it is now time to look at America’s sad overall history with unconventional threats to get a sense of how our performance can inform our response to current and future unconventional threats, including from pandemics and bioweapons.

II.) America’s History of Failure in Unconventional and Asymmetric Warfare

Not bad for a little furball, there’s only one left.

—Gen. Han Solo to Princess Leia Organa after a tiny Ewok lured three Imperial Scout Troopers away from guarding the Death Star II’s shield generator’s rear entrance on Endor’s moon, in George Lucas’s Star Wars: Episode VI: Return of the Jedi (1983)

Ironically, as Historian Max Boot noted, “today, we’re used to having American soldiers be the forces of the government. And, of course, in our revolution, we were the insurgents and the British were the role of the counterinsurgents, and, in fact, many of the strategies which the American rebels used against the British are similar in many ways to the strategies now being used against us around the world.”  There’s a reason for that current state of affairs, and it’s about our unmatched power.

America’s military might—by far the greatest on earth—is both a blessing and a curse. 

It is a blessing in that nobody can take us on militarily directly, nor can any plausible coalition of nations, especially when factoring in our massive alliance system, an “empire of trust;” this combination of hard and soft power is unlike anything in history since ancient Rome.

Yet this very power means that smart enemies do not even try to take us on in a traditional military sense; conventional, symmetric responses are, essentially, suicidal for our enemies, who, instead, opt for unconventional and asymmetric means.  In the words of Gen. H.R. McMaster, “There are basically two ways to fight the US military: asymmetrically and stupid.”  Thus, mostly all our recent conflicts have been a.) primarily unconventional in that, for the bulk of the fighting, we are operating against forces that are not regular state military units in standard-range uniforms behaving within more traditional norms of warfare and  b.) primarily asymmetric in that this unconventional organization, equipment, tactics, and strategy on the part of our adversaries are products of those adversaries accepting the power imbalance between our stronger forces and their weaker ones and are designed to address this imbalance

And when facing unconventional and asymmetric warfare in recent decades, America’s track record is actually pretty poor.  Without a doubt, biowarfare falls under the category of unconventional since it involves illegal, rare, and atypically deployed weapons and is also asymmetric because few things besides bioweapons can reduce the advantages of a more powerful enemy with such relatively low cost and easy access. 

Throughout our history, it was basically in campaigns marked by sustained brutality—including massive forced population transfers and the killing of civilians—that American colonists and later the U.S. Army defeated Native Americans over several centuries, who themselves often employed what we would call unconventional and asymmetric tactics, as well as brutal ones.

Ironically considering our later history, we used unconventional, asymmetric tactics to great success against the British in our Revolution. 

But it was in massive failure that U.S. Army troops defending both civil rights for freed slaves and legitimate biracial state governments withdrew from the Reconstructed South (the final troops leaving in 1877) as white supremacist terrorist campaigns destroyed every one of those governments in the postwar South.  The Ku Klux Klan and others carried on an insurgency lasting years of unconventional, asymmetric warfare and terrorism against U.S. forces, local troops, state governments, the rule of law itself, and those citizens who worked with and supported the new order, them whether white or black (and in this sense, their campaigns were hardly different from the terrorist insurgencies in Vietnam, Iraq, or Afghanistan).  The more just society being built in relatively modern terms was destroyed, and the ensuing Jim Crow reign of terror of the Klan, the noose, and corrupted local judicial systems in the American South and sometimes beyond would not begin to be seriously dismantled until the 1960.  Thus, with the Civil War, the U.S. won the war in four years but lost the peace for about a century after.

With the massive unconventional and asymmetric insurrection in the Philippines, which the U.S. occupied in 1898 in the Spanish-American War, it was back to brutality and murder to achieve victory.  That is not to say that, to its credit, the U.S. did not start with a softer hand there, but that proved to be ineffective at stopping the Filipino rebels, and it was only when harsher and more robust measures were taken that the insurgents were truly defeated.

While American forces in the Vietnam war won all the actual big battles against the conventional North Vietnamese Army, the unconventional Viet Cong above all else eventually broke America’s will to keep fighting in Vietnam with an unconventional, asymmetric approach.  Our collective withdrawal from South Vietnam and, eventually, Saigon was an ignominious disaster for U.S. interests in the region and those of our South Vietnamese allies.  Leaving aside any debates on a “road not taken” and military tactical successes, the U.S. was, simply, defeated.  America won the battles, yet lost the war.

In Lebanon and Somalia, American leaders rapidly drew down their involvement after a series of high-profile Hezbollah bombings in Beirut in 1983 and the notorious “Black Hawk Down” incident in Mogadishu in 1993 despite both missions having substantial international support.  Key humanitarian aims of the mission in Somalia were actually fairly well-accomplished and saved hundreds of thousands of lives before the withdrawal, and even in Lebanon with our problematic mission there, significant humanitarian achievements still occurred.

In between the unconventional, asymmetric challenges in Lebanon and Somalia, our overwhelming triumph in the conventional 1991 Gulf War actually helped lead us to be overconfident and over-reliant when it came to our conventional military abilities (and, to a lesser extent, the same could be said of the two air campaigns in the Balkans), setting us up for even greater failures in ensuing decades.  “Black Hawk Down” would be first buzzkill of our post-Gulf War high, just the first of many setbacks in the wars to come.  And in the cases of both Lebanon and Somalia, terrorists—Hezbollah and al-Qaeda—took inspiration for future terrorist attacks from our withdrawals, with both Lebanon and Somalia devolving into prolonged periods of war that killed many people and terribly destabilized their respective regions.

As for al-Qaeda, its Osama bin Laden had several basic goals behind their asymmetric, unconventional 9/11 attacks that would come years later.  They looked at the world relevant to them as being divided into two major camps: the “near enemy”—all the regimes ruling Muslim populations that were not run by Islamic principles as defined by al-Qaeda: the monarchs, dictators, and democracies from Saudi Arabia to Egypt to Indonesia—and the “far enemy”—foreign governments propping up the near enemy, especially the United States.

With 9/11, bin Laden wanted to recreate for America the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan.  As he saw it, the Soviet invasion galvanized Muslims from around the world to fight off the atheist communist infidel invader, who got bogged down over years in a conflict that sapped its treasure and strength and led to the Soviet Union’s final collapse; with the invaders ousted from Afghanistan, an Islamic regime in al-Qaeda’s mold—the Taliban—came to power. 

Osama bin Laden’s dream with 9/11, then, was to bait the U.S. into one or more wars of attrition, rally Muslims from around the world to his banner to fight the occupying invader, force an American withdrawal after it expended so much blood and treasure, seethe U.S. sour on supporting allied governments in the Middle East in the aftermath, and pull its bases out as a result or as a result of additional conflict with and attacks from al-Qaeda, flushed with recruits after already beating the Americans in one war.  In short, the endgame was to remove the presence and influence of the “far enemy”—namely America—in the Middle East and then topple the “near enemy” regimes there and elsewhere ruling over the Muslim world.   

As we know, 9/11 helped bin Laden goad the U.S. into two such wars, not just in Afghanistan but also in Iraq, and while we withdrew from Iraq after seven-and-a-half years on terms far better than the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam, extremists’ policies against their own people on the parts of both the Syrian government and our allied Iraqi government empowered the unconventional and asymmetric ISIS—Zarqawi’s al Qaeda in Iraq’s rebirth and successor—to create a “caliphate” that ate up large parts of territory in both countries, forcing the U.S. reentry into Iraq and intensifying involvement in Syria.  While bin Laden expected us to invade Afghanistan, Iraq was something of a gift to him. 

The Iraq War resulted in the removal of Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq, meaning Iran became our biggest enemy in the region.  But while in the beginning this was due mainly to a process of elimination, shortly after, it would also be because Iran grew considerably in power as a result of our actions, eventually playing dominant roles in Iraq and Syria and having major influence in Yemen, too, in, addition to having its longstanding leverage in Lebanon.  In short, Iran was the main victor of our Iraq War.  But especially considering how dynamics played out as war raged in Syria and up through today, Iran is hardly the only major U.S. foe to benefit from recent U.S. missteps and missed opportunities: the chief global U.S. antagonist, Russia, is also far stronger in the Middle East today at the expense of the U.S. (not to mention elsewhere around the globe). 

Ironically, as I have noted, counterinsurgency (COIN) worked well in the Iraq War after the negligent leadership of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and its gains held well until late 2013 in spite of a U.S. withdrawal that had been completed before the end of 2011.  Much of this effort was overseen by Rumsfeld’s replacement, Sec. Robert Gates, and the man in uniform he tapped to execute the mission, Gen. David Petraeus. But the earlier blunders of the U.S. had pushed to the center stage of a frightened, increasingly sectarian Iraq one Nuri Kamal al-Maliki as Iraq’s prime minister, who fed off division and increased it at the same time, playing somewhat nice while U.S. troops were still in-country but becoming increasingly unshackled as time went on and especially after the U.S. pullout.  Rather than the Obama Administration’s withdrawal, then, it was Maliki’s oppressive governing style that wiped out U.S. security gains and soon had ISIS governing a “caliphate” that included large portions of Iraqi territory right up to the gates of Baghdad by mid-2014, a situation demanding U.S. entry into the conflict to prevent a terrible situation from becoming far worse and far more genocidal, in spite of the Obama Administration’s reluctance to reinsert U.S. forces into Iraq after withdrawing them just a few years earlier.

The same Obama Administration, reluctant to appear political in an election year, responded abysmally in 2016 to Russia’s game-changing asymmetric unconventional election interference that relied on propaganda, disinformation, hacking, and social media.  In short, we lost what I dubbed the (First) Russo-American Cyberwar, and it is worth noting (and I have noted) that, from the media to the government to the public, we are making many of the same mistakes we did in the 2016 election cycle in the 2020 election cycle, to some degree even willfully.  Russia is beating us at unconventional asymmetric cyberwarfare with advanced, pioneering approaches; the Second Russo-American Cyberwar is already underway and America is already losing.

And while the Obama Administration took a relatively large degree of care to avoid alienating local populations and inflicting civilian casualties while staying true to allies in its fight against ISIS, the Trump Administration has pretty much taken an anything-but approach—killing far more civilians—even as it relaxed its assault against ISIS when the group was close to losing all its territory in Syria and Iraq, allowing for ISIS to make something of a comeback.  Even worse, in October, 2019, the Trump Administration abandoned our true allies there—the Kurds and others fighting alongside and inside the Syrian Democratic Forces (S.D.F.)–who had worked together for years against both ISIS and Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad’s regime.  This betrayal was carried out so suddenly, and in such a way, that it dramatically undermined our ability to fight unconventional asymmetric warfare in the region, an ability that is so heavily dependent on trust and partnering with non-state actors on the ground who have longstanding, intimate relationships with the locals as members of their communities and know the landscape as only locals can.  This withdrawal was also done in a way that undermined our entire regional position, ceding much territory and influence to actors working against many of our interests: to an “ally” we could not trust (Turkey, seeking to pulverize both Kurdish forces that had fought alongside us and Kurdish autonomy as well as engage in “demographic engineering” against the Kurds) and our main rivals in the region (Russia and Iran, Assad’s top allies).  This withdrawal minimized what was already a minimal deployment (far from a costly or expensive one, especially relative to so many recent deployments) that was giving us an amazing payoff for the small amount of resources allocated.

As for the Afghanistan war, that “other” war that bin Laden’s 9/11 prodded us into, it has been a mess for nearly its entirety and still is, waxing and waning to one degree or another in its state of messiness, Afghanistan having been at war for decades before the U.S. toppled the Taliban.  Here, too, unconventional and asymmetric tactics wore down American will after American leadership’s initial projections of swift “victory” set up inevitable cynicism and disappointment, with Alec Worsnop highlighting for the Modern War Institute at West Point (MWI)  the Taliban’s particular skill at asymmetry.  Though the Obama Administration tapped Gen. Petraeus to recreate his successes in Iraq in Afghanistan with another surge, the far lower degree of national development there combined with U.S. political leadership not being committed to the resourcing required to achieve our stated aims—let alone try to sell Americans on a longer-term commitment—meant that, with that Petraeus surge or without it, that war would remain what it has been for years: an exercise in futility apart from preventing an unstable, violent status quo from becoming far worse.  Another surge under the Trump Administration also failed to significantly alter the overall negative dynamics on the ground for the better.  However President Trump describes his intent to pull out U.S. forces now, it is hard to objectively consider American disengagement after so many years as anything but a victory to the Taliban unless the Taliban suddenly becomes the opposite of what it has consistently been for the entirety of the conflicted, which is an extremist religious group that resorts to extreme methods to achieve its aims, relying almost wholly on violence and terror to “govern” and one that cannot be trusted to upholds agreements of any sort, let alone the type the Trump Administration is trying to reach with it. 

There has not anytime recently been and will not be the political will for a significantly better-resourced, medium-to-longer-term international effort in Afghanistan, the best approach to give that country its best chance to transition to overall to higher levels of stability and one that I advocated for in writing in 2009 as a graduate student. But that hardly means the failures in Afghanistan are all on the political-leadership side and that the military does not also shoulder significant blame, as the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan from 2003-2005, Gen. David Barno, wrote in 2019.  Still, senior military leaders seem to have been more careful with their use of language compared to political leaders, and it was the political leadership that either set expectations and parameters that were unrealistic or simply avoided engaging with the public on the war, hoping more to avoid having the war cause them political damage than have any seriously honest national public dialogue about Afghanistan.

What we have been engaging in there in an overall sense—open-ended long-term stalemate that prevents a worst-case scenario—can be a hard sell as the best option (not that it has been generally honestly sold as that), but that does not necessarily make it bad policy.  To quote Gen. Petraeus in a recent piece (one he penned with security-policy hand Vance Serchuk): “This strategy has been costly and unsatisfying—but also reasonably successful.”

Yet, just as was the case in Syria, President Trump seems ready to just walk away in a way that leaves America, along with our local allies, exposed and weakened.

III.) Understanding Our Failure Against Nontraditional Threats and How That Relates to the COVID-19 Pandemic

There’s an old saying in Tennessee—I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee—that says, fool me once, shame on—shame on you. Fool me—you can’t get fooled again.

—President George W. Bush, September 17, 2002

Patterns and Themes of Failure

As Gen. Petraeus and Serchuk concluded in their piece on Afghanistan: “More broadly, history suggests that capitulation in the name of peace rarely succeeds in either curbing an adversary’s ambitions or moderating its behavior—at least not for long.”  Far more often than not, this has been proven repeatedly by rapid U.S disengagement in Lebanon, Somalia, and Syria, each of which preceded further disasters.

If one thinks of long-term American objectives in the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia as they have stood over several decades now, the net results of our two massive wars there are massive setbacks right and left and up and down throughout those regions.  To a large extent, we did exactly what bin Laden wanted us to do: while he may have not have gotten the full collapse of the U.S. and long-lasting caliphate of which he dreamed, he still played us like a harp and saw huge portions of his goals realized from our myopia, not just in the Muslim world but also in how our two 9/11-prodded wars changed America by dividing Americans, draining national resources in a way that helped generate an economic near-collapse in 2008, and weakening our domestic democratic politics and institutions.  So perhaps, domestically, bin Laden’s plan is still a posthumous work-in-progress; we may very well make it out of these dark times with our system intact, but that is not guaranteed, and if we do not, 9/11 will surely be looked at as the catalyst for a chain of self-destructive events and trends that were accelerating well-before this current pandemic.  And the dynamics behind many of those events and trends are tied directly or indirectly with our failure to address non-traditional threats successfully. 

At the time of the peak of the “surge” COIN campaign that dramatically improved security conditions in Iraq, it might have been harder (though hardly impossible) to see possible failure and far harder to see an ISIS “caliphate” peaking some seven years later, but, conversely, at this peak of ISIS’s territorial gains, it is hard to look back at the surge and think that it ever had a chance to produce long-term success.  Perhaps the sectarianism and violence unleashed during Sec. Rumsfeld’s tenure, then, meant any positive impact from Sec. Gates and Gen. Petraeus, no matter how right-headed and brilliant they were, was doomed not to be as transformative as we wished, and probably from the start, especially since those Rumsfeldian dynamics installed Maliki in Iraq before the surge and well before the time we withdrew, helping him stay in power even when his heavier worsened.  Or, perhaps the surge era-effort was not doomed; to his credit, Gen. Petraeus saw, writing in late October 2013, that “this is a time for [American and Iraqi leaders of the surge] to work together to help Iraqi leaders take the initiative, especially in terms of reaching across the sectarian and ethnic divides that have widened in such a worrisome manner.  It is not too late for such action, but time is running short.”  He was all too right: time was running very short, as it was just matter of a few months until it would all come crashing down.   

I included the discussion and points in the previous paragraph here to illustrate the larger point that such is often how the U.S. finds itself: fighting demons of its own making, never really getting away enough from those demons to have a fresh start, succeed, and reach its ideals, however genuine those ideals may be.  If Sec. Gates and Gen. Petraeus were, in many ways, prisoners of the mistakes of the early years of the U.S. in Iraq and Sec. Rumsfeld’s legacy, then Obama and his team, as well as Iraq and Iraqis overall, were, in a similar sense, prisoners of the Bush Administration’s legacy.  In this world we live in, the U.S. is hardly unique here except perhaps sometimes in matters of degree, as other nations, whole peoples, even ourselves as individuals are often prisoners of our own past or those of our parents and ancestors.  We fall prey to the demons of the past and, in doing so, create demons of our own, ensnaring our very children, and their children, and so on, a generational, tragic spiral of trauma.  Indeed, trauma has a nasty habit of outliving its immediate effects (and exponentially so, at that).  It literally embeds itself into our very beings, down to our genes.

And our demons of failure with unconventional and asymmetric threats haunt us today and will for some time: the American government simply does not seem to get how to deal with the irregular and non-traditional.  For MWI nonresident fellow Max Brooks, there is something of a cultural deficiency in America that pushes us in this direction; in a mid-March interview discussing the problems with our current coronavirus response, Brooks remarked that “American culture has always had strengths and weaknesses, and one of our weaknesses has always been putting our head in the sand.  Not reacting to coronavirus—that’s just the latest one—but 9/11, Sputnik, Pearl Harbor … Americans are always the worst at proactive response.  That’s our weakness.”

So when confronted with such threats, the U.S. has failed and failed pretty miserably in a larger sense since the 1960s.  From the terrorism of the Taliban to the cyberwarfare of Russia, there are certain common denominators present in these asymmetric, unconventional situations to which we are not properly adjusting, ensuing that we keep losing again and again and again, allowing our own strengths and divisions to be played to cripple democracy at home (Russia’s election interference in 2016) and sometimes seeing the unraveling of our own notable own successes (the rise of ISIS in Iraq in 2014 negating the 2007 surge) or even undoing them ourselves (missions having positive impact turning into rapid withdrawals in 1984 in Lebanon, 1994 in Somalia, and 2019 in Syria).

COVID-19’s Deadly Impact Magnified by Recent U.S. Failures Facing Unconventional, Asymmetric Crises

If this seems unrelated to coronavirus, think again.

That withdrawal of most of a tiny contingent of U.S. troops in northern Syria has not only led to a reinvigorated ISIS but also a massive humanitarian crisis.  Millions of Syrians there are caught in what one article’s headline calls “the world’s worst game of Risk.”  In fact, even though Syria is now getting far less attention in the media because of coronavirus and a general ennui for Syria among other factors, the current situation in Syria is the worst humanitarian crisis of the entire decade-long war, with more people being driven from their homes than at any other time of the war.

The Idlib governorate on Turkey’s border is the last major rebel stronghold in Syria and has some three million people living in it now, but half those are Syrians internally displaced from their homes (IDPs) because of the war.  With the latest round of fighting in Idlib, some one million people have been recently displaced there, many not for the first time.  To make matters even worse, the region is experiencing an unusually harsh winter and displaced children are freezing to death in the cold. 

On top of war, a lack of supplies and aid coming in, and harsh conditions, now these desperate people must face coronavirus, a threat well-represented by the title of a recent Refugees International briefing, “A Crisis on Top of a Crisis: COVID-19 Looms over War-Ravaged Idlib,” which describes the situation there regarding coronavirus as being “like a tinderbox waiting for the match.”  The disease is spreading elsewhere in Syria and Turkey, surrounding Idlib, but conditions in northern Syria—with Syrian, Iranian, Russian, Kurdish, Turkish, S.D.F., and ISIS forces operating among other groups in a chaotic theater—mean tracking and treating the virus are themselves Herculean tasks.  Reporting on the virus can be slow, and that is if authorities are cooperating and being transparent, which in Syria and elsewhere in the region is hardly a given; in other words, we really have no idea how bad coronavirus is spreading in the area.  Furthermore, it is incredibly difficult getting aid into Idlib with all the fighting as the Syrian Civil War rages with the Assad regime’s forces’ latest offensive into Idlib, supported by Russian and Iranian forces; attacks against civilians are rampant.  The Syrian government is even blocking the transport of medical supplies to where they are needed, finding a way to weaponize the coronavirus even as aid workers and local medical staff are flat-out warning that they are not equipped or prepared to deal with coronavirus, with medical equipment and supplies being scarce in the area.

Even before this COVID-19 crisis, the local healthcare infrastructure had been decimated by the war, with some 80 hospitals taken out of commission in Idlib alone.  This has been by design, as, throughout the war, Assad regime forces with Russian backing have been deliberately targeting hospitals and other key civilian infrastructure related to food and water, as has the Russian Air Force.  Displaced civilians were already extremely vulnerable in Idlib, and now they face a pandemic with great uncertainty as to whether they will have the necessary aid to survive it alongside a host of other threats in a warzone (you can help them here).  The virus will certainly make (and already has made) their already extremely difficult lives significantly worse even if it does not infect or kill them.

These civilians in Idlib are often fleeing the Syrian’s government’s offensive to a Turkish border that has been sealed off to them—Turkey, already hosting some 3.7 million refugees, refuses to take in any more—with masses of people trapped with nowhere to go, a situation ripe for a coronavirus outbreak as they cannot practice social distancing since they live in crowded tents (if they even have shelter), nor do they have the ability to practice good hygiene since they lack proper amounts of soap and easy access to water.  Refugee camps there and elsewhere in the Middle East are teeming with people and short on necessary supplies, meaning they are potential disasters-in-the-making.

This conflict has only greatly intensified in Syria’s north lately in the absence of a stabilizing U.S. presence after the recent U.S. withdrawal discussed earlier.  It was because of that withdrawal that Turkey was able to carry out its destabilizing invasion of northern Syria, an invasion that itself displaced hundreds of thousands of people.  After its reckless invasion and engaging directly against Assad’s forces, Turkey—a NATO member state—has been furious that NATO is not supporting it as it takes casualties from attacks from Syrian forces getting support from the Russian government.  To pressure NATO states, Turkey is actively encouraging thousands of refugees it is hosting to migrate to Greece and Europe, even transporting them to the no-man’s land separating the Turkish and Greek borders—where desperate refugees caught as pawns have even clashed with Greek border guards—in a naked play to use these refugees as leverage against European NATO countries.  Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has made his intent in this regard explicit and clear and does not even try to deny he is weaponizing the refugees for political purposes.  If refugees in Turkey come down with COVID-19, this would be a far more ominous context for the dangerous game Turkey is playing with Europe.  For now, with coronavirus spreading in Turkey and Greece and refugees in camps in Greece coming down with the virus, the Turkish government late in March evacuated the makeshift camp that had popped up for the refugees it had sent to the Greek border and quarantined the refugees for two weeks. Those being released from the quarantine often end up sleeping in the streets, caught in limbo amid coronavirus, with Turkey indicating it will recklessly resend them to the closed Greek border once the pandemic subsides.

In Syria, Turkey, Greece, and all over the world, aid operations were forced to undergo massive, disruptive adjustments are being cut back drastically because of COVID-19, and with a field that was already spread thin amid a record number of people being displaced globally, the vulnerable populations the aid field was servicing cannot afford to be deprioritized.

But in particular, in northern Syria, President Trump’s Syrian withdrawal was the catalyst for the sad chain of events that has the situation there where it is now: far worse than it would have been otherwise and guaranteed to get even worse yet in the midst of a global pandemic.  The difference this all will cause in the number of dead from COVID-19 and its spillover effects will likely be in the thousands as U.S. incompetence in the face of one unconventional, asymmetric threat amplifies the harm from another unconventional, asymmetric threat.  Though the second is not man-made, the increase in the damage it will do is.

America’s Own COVID-19 Failures Mirror Its Failures in Fighting Nontraditional Threats

The issues surrounding the conflicts in Vietnam, Lebanon, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria were complicated and difficult to understand, and many Americans preferred moving on and forgetting.  After all, most Americans could live their lives and not be affected by the nature of unconventional, asymmetric warfare in a distant land.  But the unconventional, asymmetric threats posed by coronavirus, pandemics in general, biowarfare, and bioterrorism are not something from which Americans can conveniently shrink away: they are dangerous to us here at home all over the country, not just a small portion of volunteer military personnel deployed thousands of miles away or one city or several targeted in a particular al-Qaeda/ISIS-style “normal” terrorist attack.  Thus, the approach that has created a pattern of failure for America regarding unconventional, asymmetric threats in the past is even more inappropriate, problematic, and unacceptable for our present pandemic and similar biothreats.

Whether in Vietnam, Iraq, or Afghanistan, our leaders early on projected a supreme level of confidence and a belief in total victory even as they understood little about the nature of the threats they faced and what would be required to actually come out on top.  As these conflicts unfolded in their earlier phases, the political leaders initiating and running our military involvement never communicated to the public how truly difficult, open-ended, and indefinite our missions could or would be.  Because of these characterizations, proper resourcing was often a huge problem, especially given the tendencies to downplay the challenges we faced in these conflicts.  Instead, what we were told was that victory was usually just around the corner.  Furthermore, by focusing on short-term accomplishments for the sake of trying to boost public opinion, they very accomplishments themselves were made shallower and more likely to depress public opinion over time since they were more likely to come undone.  In the end, this meant that relatively short-term, technically successful increases in military deployments—ones leaders signaled ahead of time would be short-term and the goal of which was to improve security and stability enough for politics on-the-ground to move significantly in the right direction and not backslide—were always going to have a risk of history repeating itself just after or not long after the shorter-term surges; when these deployments’ effects wore off (or, even worse, the deployment itself failed to have the desired effect), it would be time for another deployment, with new deployments increasing frustration for a public that had been told we were “winning” and, over time, damaging that public’s willingness to support our military efforts as well as the Confidence of our local allies so crucial to the fight. 

Tragically, that is what happened in both of the major wars al-Qaeda sucked America into, with the same man (Gen. Petraeus) leading roughly the same surge strategy in both countries—first in Iraq, then later in Afghanistan—but the eventual hoped-for political resolutions never coming from local actors, who, having seen America’s inconsistency and mistakes up close, were more interested in sectarian and tribal agendas to bolster their positions than either allowing the U.S. to claim victory or making concessions necessary for multi-ethnic, religiously pluralistic territories to truly come together under one flag.

At the end of Invisible Armies, his seminal history on guerrilla warfare, Max Boot presents a series of major lessons from his study. One is that “most insurgencies are long-lasting; attempts to win a quick victory backfire”: 

The fact that low-intensity conflict tends to be “long, arduous and protracted,” in the words of Sir Robert Thompson, can be a source of frustration for both sides, but attempts to short-circuit the process to achieve a quick victory usually backfire.  The United States tried to do just that in the early years of the Vietnam and Iraq wars by using its conventional might to hunt down insurgents in a push for what John Paul Vann rightly decried as “fast, superficial results.”  It was only when the United States gave up hopes of quick victory, ironically, that it started to get results by implementing the tried-and-true tenets of population-centric counterinsurgency.  In Vietnam, it was already too late, but in Iraq the patient provision of security came just in time.

A particularly seductive version of the “quick win” strategy is to try to eliminate the insurgency’s leadership. …there are just…many examples where leaders were eliminated but the movement went on, sometimes stronger than ever—as both Hezbollah and Al Qaeda in Iraq did. High-level “decapitation” strategies work best when a movement is weak organizationally and focused around a cult of personality. Even then leadership targeting is most effective if integrated into a broader counterinsurgency effort designed to separate the insurgents from the population. If conducted in isolation, leadership raids are about as effective as mowing the lawn; the targeted organization can usually regenerate itself.

I have literally lost track of how many times the number-two or number-whatever leader of al-Qaeda or an affiliate or ISIS was proudly announced as killed by the U.S. (often from a drone strike), and I remember that political leaders and whichever-Administration spokespeople were usually quite eager to broadcast this as some sort of major accomplishment or an indication that things were going well even when they clearly were not.  The emphasis our government places on this tactic from a public-relations perspective when considering its ineffectiveness betrays that eagerness to present the public with quick fixes to complex problems that has so hampered our efforts in unconventional, asymmetric warfare.

Another lesson of Boot’s is that “conventional tactics don’t work against an unconventional threat”: 

Regular soldiers often assume that they will have no difficulty besting ragtag fighters who lack the firepower or discipline of a professional fighting force.  Their mindset was summed up by General George Decker, U.S. Army chief of staff from 1960 to 1962, who said, “Any good soldier can handle guerrillas.”  The Vietnam War and countless other conflicts have disproven this bromide. Big-unit, firepower-intensive operations snare few guerrillas and alienate many civilians.  To defeat insurgents, soldiers must take a different approach that focuses not on chasing insurgents but on securing the population.  This is the difference between “search and destroy” and “clear and hold.”  The latter approach is hardly pacifistic.  It too requires the application of violence and coercion but in carefully calibrated and intelligently targeted doses.  As an Israeli general told me, “Better to fight terror with an M-16 than an F-16.”

In this sense, too often we have favored the F-16, the metaphor for heavy firepower and advanced technology, including drones, missiles, and bombers, as a substitute for long-term policy, and, indeed, one of Boot’s lessons is that “technology has been less important in guerrilla war than in conventional war,” since

all guerrilla and terrorist tactics, from suicide bombing to hostage taking and roadside ambushes, are designed to negate the firepower advantage of conventional forces.  In this type of war, technology counts for less than in conventional conflict.  Even the possession of nuclear bombs, the ultimate weapon, has not prevented the Soviet Union and the United States from suffering ignominious defeat at guerrilla hands.  To the extent that technology has mattered in low-insurgency conflicts, it has often been the nonshooting kind.  As T. E. Lawrence famously said, “The printing press is the greatest weapon in the armory of the modern commander.”  A present-day rebel might substitute “the Internet” for “the printing press,” but the essential insight remains valid.

In an interview, Boot also notes our amnesia with these types of conflicts, how

this is a recurring problem, that armies do not like fighting guerrilla wars. They regard it as being beneath them, because they don’t regard guerrillas as being worthy enemies. Unfortunately, they keep getting forced into these guerrilla wars and what normally happens is they do learn how to fight after a period of trial and error, and after suffering costly defeats. But then as soon as they leave that war behind, they tend to forget what they’ve learned.

Former U.S. Army Lt. Col. Christopher Holshek—an old professor of mine in a class I took in Liberia, studying the United Nations peacekeeping mission there—perfectly summed up our failures in these conflicts in an article for Foreign Policy:

The phase-four [post-conflict stabilization and reconstruction] fates of Operations Iraqi and Enduring Freedom [the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, respectively] were due more to the sins of omission than of commission.  The U.S. government, in its haste to do in months what takes years, threw billions at hearts-and-minds boondoggles and into ministries yielding corruption, roads to nowhere, and teacher-less schools, among other counterproductive outcomes.  The vast waste has led to the current conventional wisdom that development, coded as “nation-building,” doesn’t work.  Of course it doesn’t, if you don’t do it right.

(In a way that should offer us no consolation whatsoever, it is worth noting that a large part of his article was demonstrating how ISIS was far worse at phase four than we were).

As then-President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Jessica Tuchman Mathews wrote about the Iraq surge in late 2007, “for America’s larger strategic interests, buying more time to continue the same strategy can achieve nothing. To do so is to ask American troops to fight to create breathing space for a corpse.”  In the short-term, that was not the case: the gains made in security from the surge were significant and improved and lasted over the next few years, but beyond that, it is impossible to deny that that the political breakthroughs the surge was designed to encourage did not materialize nearly enough and that all the security successes came undone between the actions of Maliki and ISIS by 2014.  And unfortunately, Matthews’s quote reverberates far beyond Iraq and can sum up so many of our strategic failures in the era after World War II.

Our leaders were simply just not honest about what we were up against or did not know themselves, and, as a result, the public never really grasped what was going on and why things went the way they did.  When the productive measures were taken, they would often too little and/or too late, with far more death and destruction happening in the long-run as a result.  As a society and a nation, we failed to properly address these threats, at great cost for ourselves and others.  Shorter-term commitments were advertised as quick fixes that were really just false fantasies, increasing and extending the pain and perhaps dooming us to repeat ourselves in wasteful, frustrating cycles that left us demoralized, diminished, and depleted.

If reading this, you are asking yourself if this sounds familiar and eerily current somehow, well, yes, it should, as our response to the unconventional coronavirus pandemic fits frighteningly and maddeningly all too well—even exactly—into these patterns and obviously so.

IV.) The World Fails on Coronavirus, Led by America

Living systems are not like mechanical systems.  Living systems are never in equilibrium.  They are inherently unstable.  They may seem stable, but they’re not.  Everything is moving and changing.  In a sense, everything is on the edge of collapse.

—John Arnold, in Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park (1990)

When asked recently “where” we went “wrong” specifically as far as the coronavirus pandemic but also generally, if there  was an “exact moment,” journalist Masha Gessen replied by saying “I think there are many moments.  But certainly, our responses, as a nation, to 9-11 and to the financial crisis of 2008, paved the ground for this, as has our persistent disregard for the climate crisis.”

We must hope that, in the long-run, we do not respond to the coronavirus in incredibly self-destructive ways that echo our responses to 9/11 and the other unconventional, asymmetric threats we failed to properly understand and handle as outlined above. Depressingly, though, the signs are already dire.

One of the most depressing things about this pandemic is that, as an American who had little faith in our leadership or system to significantly mitigate this looming disaster, I looked to countries with far more competent leadership and more centralized and robust health systems than ours to be beacons in the night of this pandemic, especially for democratic countries to beam in this true trial not just for humanity, but Western democracy, which has been teetering of late.  I saw a few slivers of light for effective coronavirus programs so far—South Korea especially above all but also Israel, Germany, plucky Ireland, and, at least through the present and perhaps still to be, Japan—but, overwhelmingly, I saw darkness where I expected light in Europe from technocratic establishments and national health systems that (mostly) did not have buffoons in charge or the gaping holes of America’s health system that this pandemic has displayed all-too glaringly.  Italy, Spain, and France are obvious disasters, along with the Netherlands and the UK (whose Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, led the way with poor choices both personally and as a leader and found himself hospitalized in an intensive care unit; and just look at this thread delving into differences between the UK and Ireland). Even Sweden seems like it could be an example of bad-practice: like the other mentioned countries, it did not take proper precautions for long after it should have.  Some of these countries are regular fountains of inspiration for Americans who expect more from their government, but these nations failed here along with us to varying degrees.  In the absence of traditional U.S. global-level leadership, then, there essentially was no global leadership. 

Much of the developing world has yet to be hard hit, but there is great potential for the tolls there to be devastating.  The terrible government response in Brazil–exemplified by the country’s president, Jair Bolsonaro—seems to be setting up a tidal wave of infections, which were recently likely twelve times higher than officially reported numbers.  In Ecuador, a country with little ability to conduct proper testing to determine the full extent of the virus, the death toll recently seemed to be fifteen times higher than what officials there had been able to determine.  If the coronavirus spreads intensely in Africa, the prospects there are also looking quite grim.  In many poorer nations around the world, social distancing is a privilege and a luxury that for a great many is impossible (not even getting into the situation of earlier-discussed refugees).  And already terrible social and economic conditions in many developing nations are only being made exponentially worse by COVID-19, meaning that hunger is now going to be a much larger problem globally, rising to affect 265 million people after factoring in coronavirus, nearly doubling the pre-pandemic figures.  Other sad realities coronavirus will exponentially inflate include, but are hardly limited to, domestic abuse, human trafficking, and suicide.  The threat to the developing world is only exacerbated by the recent inexcusable, despicable, “incredibly stupid,” and needless U.S. announcement that it will halt funding for the World Health Organization (WHO) in the midst of a global pandemic, a decision that for many in the world’s poorest nations that sorely lack vital resources amounts to a death sentence if that funding is not replaced soon from elsewhere; as if that was not enough, the Trump Administration is seeking to do long-term damage to the WHO beyond just defunding it.

Despite plenty of poor responses globally, that top national leadership in America seems to have stood out in failing miserably is not in serious dispute for anyone attempting objectivity.  This was even obvious fairly early, before most American were concerned, with top government officials warning the president repeatedly in January and February about the extraordinary nature of the coronavirus threat and bringing it to the attention of the White House’s National Security Council even earlier.  Others outside the current Administration also sounded the alarm early, including former Vice President Joe Biden—the now-clear Democratic presidential nominee-to-be set to challenge the incumbent president for the White House—who even wrote an op-ed published on January 27 warning of the seriousness of the coronavirus threat and how ill-prepared we were to confront it.  As Richard Haas, President of the Council on Foreign Relations, made painfully clear, “putting off the decision to go on the offensive against COVID-19–treating a war of necessity as a war of choice–has proved extraordinarily costly in terms of lives lost and economic destruction.”  In a pandemic in which timing has perhaps been the most important factor or at least as important as any, our leaders at the top sat passively—even stubbornly—and refused to look at the rising viral tsunami heading in our direction, let alone acknowledge it as the hundred-year plague it was.

Even the military has been seriously affected, one notable example being the Navy having to semi-abandon one of our aircraft carriers in mid-deployment, another being that recruitment has been hampered.

And while books could be and articles already have been written that demonstrate America’s failure clearly even for the most fanatically partisan supporters of the current leadership, here will be shared just this excellent, highly informative, regularly updated chart from The Financial Timesthat shows the U.S. is, literally, the worst at “flattening the curve” (the main format has been changed but there is an interactive version of the below chart here that lets you set up your own comparisons):

That phrase “flattening the curve” (or “bending the curve” as a precursor) was only understood by a handful of people a few months ago but is now well-known coronavirus-era lingo for taking collective action to limit the spread and death-toll of the virus, to lower the height of the curve (bend it) over and then keep it from increasing (flattening it) so that our medical systems can better care for those infected (with bending again all the way down after flattening as the endgame). Clearly, our American curve stands out in the above chart as both the most stridently upward-trending arc and the arc that took the longest to be pulled down relative to other nations grappling with serious coronavirus outbreaks over a similar timeframe.  Case/infection-counts are highly problematic for a variety of reasons, but the deaths statistic is far clearer as to its weight, meaning, and finality, the above chart highlighting quite well that statistic and how well countries are at slowing deaths (even if globally across the board there is a serious problem of unintentional undercounting and underattributing deaths from coronavirus, tracking deaths is still far less ambiguous than tracking overall cases/infections). 

So, relatively speaking, despite massive daily disinformation to the contrary, the U.S seems to have done the worst job of flattening the curve of coronavirus deaths out of countries with significant levels of infection that have experienced fighting coronavirus for a similar amount of time, and this would seem to be the case even for allowing for countries like China (from which this pandemic originated) and Russia, which are virtually certainly deliberately underreporting their coronavirus case numbers and deaths and also allowing for serious questions about developing countries with poor means of tracking the virus, as discussed earlier.  And while the U.S. is hardly the worst in terms of deaths per capita, the above chart shows with the available data that it is still the worst of any country with a major outbreak at slowing the level of death (and preventive measures like lockdowns seem collectively to be a much more important variable than population size or density, anyway).

And the chart just takes into account the deaths we know about; there are “almost certainly” Americans dying from coronavirus not being counted as coronavirus-related deaths because of testing issues, reporting issues, and other shortcomings, with this hardly being the situation only in the U.S. 

In the U.S. in particular, the lack of testing has emerged as one of the premier failings regarding coronavirus, making our sense of how many are truly infected by (and, to a lesser extent, dying from) the virus woefully incomplete and greatly hampering our ability to accurately model the spread of the virus.  And this, in turn, makes it very difficult for leaders to plan ahead beyond the short-term.  Especially because of our lack of testing—one of the most crucial aspects of coronavirus response—we are essentially on a ship at night in heavy fog, trying to see what obstacles lie ahead and how to avoid them but unable to see far in front because of that fog and unable to have any solid sense of when the fog will lift or if or when it will return.  Under those conditions, crashing into an iceberg and sinking is far more likely.  A military counterinsurgency analogy is also apt, as not having enough testing is like trying to neuter an insurgency without having intelligence or enough regular patrols to get a lay of the land before, say, sending a major convoy through enemy territory: with few pieces of intelligence and fewer teams gathering intelligence, the chances the enemy can launch a successful ambush on that convoy when it is sent out are far greater than if you had a much larger number of troops getting much more intelligence on the enemy territory.  Intelligence helps to lift the fog of war, then, while testing helps to lift the fog of pandemics.

Considering a detailed, highly-credibly report from last year ranked America, by relatively far, as the best-prepared nation in the world for a pandemic, the failure in U.S. leadership is even more stunningly spectacular and inexcusable; it is like losing a race in which you started ahead of everyone or if you were, say, someone who inherited millions and were already working in a lucrative field (maybe real estate in Manhattan in the 1980s) and then still managed to go bankrupt six times.

In the words of Max Brooks from another interview, this one from late March:

I think that we have been disastrously slow and disorganized from day one.  I think the notion that we were caught unaware of this pandemic is just an onion of layered lies.  That is not true at all.  We have been preparing for this since the 1918 influenza pandemic.  No excuse…The knowledge was out.  We knew.  We did not prepare.  This is on us.

…All of this panic could have been prevented if the federal government had done what it was supposed to do before the crisis became a crisis.  Because the way to stop panic is with knowledge, and if the president had been working since January to get the organs of government ready for this, we as citizens could have been calmed down knowing that the people that we trust to protect us are doing that.

A friend of mine, Ellen Adair (an actress who played a top senator’s chief of staff in Homeland in its previous season while that universe’s America was facing nontraditional, asymmetric threats similar to the types we are currently facing from Russia), pointed out a specific article from a few years back that saw all too much of this coming: writing in the summer of 2018 for The Atlantic, Ed Yong terrifyingly accurately predicts not only America’s general unpreparedness for a pandemic, but why this current administration would be particularly ill-suited for handling one (his late March, 2020, predictions for how this will end—made when the U.S. outbreak was starting to really pick up steam and yet was still a fraction as bad as it is now—should also be of interest).  While the entire piece from before COVID-19 even existed feels exceedingly current and sickeningly prescient, I felt particular chills reading these words:

Perhaps most important, the U.S. is prone to the same forgetfulness and shortsightedness that befall all nations, rich and poor—and the myopia has worsened considerably in recent years.  Public-health programs are low on money; hospitals are stretched perilously thin; crucial funding is being slashed.  And while we tend to think of science when we think of pandemic response, the worse the situation, the more the defense depends on political leadership.

…Preparing for a pandemic ultimately boils down to real people and tangible things: A busy doctor who raises an eyebrow when a patient presents with an unfamiliar fever.  A nurse who takes a travel history. A hospital wing in which patients can be isolated.  A warehouse where protective masks are stockpiled. A factory that churns out vaccines.  A line on a budget.  A vote in Congress.  “It’s like a chain—one weak link and the whole thing falls apart,” says Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.  “You need no weak links.”

Right now, we look bad, and the idea of the U.S. leading the world when it cannot lead itself anymore is indeed going to be problematic for many who used to be comfortable with U.S. leadership or, at least, tacitly accepted it.  That does not mean there will be a new world order overnight, but it sure will be harder for not just millions, but likely hundreds of millions or even billions of people to see the U.S. as a leader after our failures with this virus are literally broadcast every day for global public consumption.

Of course, there is plenty of blame to go around in America, from governors’ mansions to various media outlets, from our very own American culture to ourselves, from individual institutions to local leaders.  One standout in that last group is the Wisconsin Assembly Speaker telling people during the recent controversially-held dangerous April 7^th elections in his state to go outside and vote after he himself worked to stop both extending absentee voting and delaying the election despite the pandemic, saying this to Wisconsinites this while wearing what seems to be a hospital-quality mask, gloves, and gown set.  Dysfunction and division is not just present at the federal level and between states and the federal government, then, but within states, between governors and mayors or others all throughout the country: in South Dakota, there is even a dispute between the governor and Sioux tribal authorities.

But in dire emergencies like this, the national leaders set the tone for the nation as a whole, with many others farther down the totem pole taking their cues from national leadership, none more so than the top national leader, be it a president, prime minister, or king.  And this is the way it should be.  When we were attacked at Pearl Harbor all the way back in 1941, we did not have dozens of regional, state, city, county, and town war policies operating independently from one another: we had a coordinated national effort, and fighting deadly national and global pandemics should be no different.  In the 1940s, we were able to triumph in our finest national hour even as were caught off-guard.  That clearly has not happened with coronavirus, and our “collective” “national” response can be said to be anything but a single one with unity of purpose.

In stunning displays of hubris and lack of preparation, Napoleon in 1812 and Hitler in 1941 famously sent their armies towards Russia in June, months away from the famed Russian winter, with no winter clothing.  Now we can similarly say that, in 2020, the American President allowed our medical first-line responders to face off against coronavirus without nearly enough proper protective gear despite having weeks and months to take proper action to equip them.

We could have approached this coronavirus threat with the mentality of the Starks in Game of Thrones, whose mantra is “winter is coming”: be prepared, get ready, unite, take this threat very seriously, take nothing for granted.  Instead, (spoilers for the show/books in this sentence) our leaders were more like Queen Cersei Lannister in the final seasons: warned repeatedly and with a zombie-wight coming at her face-to-face, she still did not prioritize dealing with the Army of the Dead and, instead, took the crisis as an opportunity to advance her personal and political interests, to settle scores and amass power for herself.

Wherever blame should or should not be placed, this novel (new) coronavirus has brought the world to its knees.  Socially and economically, a huge portion of global activity has come to screeching halt or, at least, a vastly reduced intensity.  Something this sudden on a global scale is new for humanity, and we have no idea even when this pandemic will really end (other than an increasing understanding that the end will probably not be soon), if it will end, how soon other waves will come or how bad those waves will be (they may be worse).  The virus’s national and overall global spread even seems to be increasing several months into the pandemic, not decreasing.  We do not know how many people will die (today, there will be over 350,000 worldwide and over 100,000 in the U.S. for just the recorded COVID-19 deaths), except that earlier rosier predictions are now clearly way off the mark.  People are deeply fearful of a deeply uncertain future and what the world will look like after this virus leaves its initial mark.  Thus, this novel coronavirus is not only engendering a sense of fear throughout the human race, but also terror.

But the true terror is to come.

V.) A Far More Worrisome Future

The death wish of the theocratic totalitarians, for themselves and others, is too impressive to overlook.

—Christopher Hitchens, “Terrorism: Notes toward a definition,” Slate, November 18, 2002

Ultimately, humanity might not end with a bang but with a feeble cough.

—Max Brooks, “The Next Pandemic Might Not Be Natural,” Foreign Policy, April 20, 2020

Despite the examples listed earlier in our brief biowarfare and bioterrorism survey and other acts not included therein, both biological warfare and bioterrorism have been exceedingly rare in history.

One obvious reason for this is that it is hard to ensure that such weapons only infect the enemy and not also the people attempting to do the infecting and their compatriots (Japanese forces, for example, incurred thousands of casualties from their own bioweapons use in China).  In other words, bioagents are so dangerous that they have mostly been felt to be too dangerous to use, especially on a larger scale.

The idea that is supposed to give us comfort is that, in theory, it is not rational to use such weapons.  Yet the country with the largest bioweapons program in history—the Soviet Union—was regarded as insecure, famously concerned with self-preservation and constrained by rational realpolitik as a result, making it fairly predictable.  Sure, the Soviets did not use these weapons, but they still put smallpox in ICBMS and worked to create disease even worse than Mother Nature has been able to create.

Rather than us being able to trust in some solid proof of human rationality—the concept of which, as an overall rule, is highly debatable at best—then, I feel the non-use of biological weapons (similar to the situation with nuclear weapons after 1945) is less a natural product of human wisdom or design but, instead, is a product of the small-N problem, that dilemma of comparative studies and of politics in general: that there is such a small number of relevant actors with bioweapons capabilities that we cannot draw rock-solid proof from those weapons’ non-use that this is non-use some sort of “natural” outcome.  In short, we have likely just “lucked out” biological (and nuclear) weapons have not been used because only a handful of governments have had serious capabilities and the technology was advanced enough to the degree that it was hard to have anyone other than governments and specialized scientists develop them, and of these small samples, only a handful of those had the will to actually pursue these weapons, with an even far smaller number pursuing their use.

As any basic statistics primer would tell you, though, the more actors that develop such capabilities, the greater the chance that such capabilities will eventually be used, with that probability increasing being a mathematical certainty.

And therein lies one of the major current problems.  For, even before now, technology had advanced in recent years to a degree that has made it far easier for governments, organizations, and individuals to research, produce, and deploy these weapons: the internet has made the information on how to do all that more available than ever before; logistics technology have made the ability to obtain and transport necessary materials easier than ever before; and advances in medical science and technology have opened up bioengineering and made creating biolabs easier, by far, than ever before. 

So that “small-N (number)” reality an ally in perpetuating the non-use of bioweapons, that bulwark that so few people had access or ability when it came to what was needed to operationalize bioweapons, has been dramatically weakened in recent years as the breadth of actors with the ability to research, develop, and deploy bioweapons has grown exponentially in recent years with the latest remarkable advances of human civilization. 

The math, then, has changed: that probability that the small-N problem kept so low is now dramatically higher.

Even putting aside the small-N problem being a more likely explanation for general non-use of bioweapons up through the present than our own supposed rationality—even if we accept, in principle, that it is our rationality that is to be credited for the lack of biowarfare and bioterrorism and could take comfort in that—the future still looks comparatively bleak.  And the reason for that is because, relative to the rest of the modern era, we ae seeing an explosion in those swelling the ranks of apocalyptic-minded groups of religiously-motivated violent extremists.  Indeed, our era has seen a sharp increase in the number of terrorists willing to sacrifice themselves, their people, and countless innocent civilians in pursuit of their apocalyptic goals.   Such terrorists are possessed with end-times-oriented mindsets that are hell-bent on accelerating the arrival of the apocalypse, with ISIS as the flagship movement.

If we add to that equation the possibility of governments using newer science—especially genetic engineering and advanced vaccination programs—to perfect a way to immunize their own militaries and people against a weapon they could then feel safe to deploy against others and therefore confident to weaponize and develop, then the threat of bioweapons being used against America and others is only increasing by yet another factor.  If you think this sounds too much like science fiction, recall how a mass biological test on the part of the U.S. government infected the whole San Francisco metropolitan area in 1950 and how the public never learned about it until 1976.  In other words, if another government wanted to immunize its population against something pretty nasty without drawing attention to that nasty something, there are more than a few ways to immunize people without people even knowing they are being immunized (slipping in with other standard immunizations, perhaps adding into the water or food supply, manufacturing a controlled “outbreak” that would give cover for a mass immunization, etc.), especially for a government motivated enough to carry out and plan years in advance a biological first strike with a deadly bioweapon.

But there are other technological multipliers that have yet to have their potential impact be anywhere near realized that make the future look even less comforting.  Technology has just recently been advancing, and is continuing to advance, rapidly in such a way that it is only going to exponentially increase the number of actors able to carry out biological attacks, and that is even in addition to the exponential increase that has already occurred recently.  And perhaps the foremost reason for this coming exponential growth in potential biothreats and actors is a new genetic engineering technique known as CRISPR—Clustered Regularly Interspersed Short Palindromic Repeats—that makes it far easier and cheaper to create bioweapons than ever before.

To put this into perspective, some CRISPR kits were selling for under $150 even in 2017.  A United Nations panel even characterized this CRISPR threat as do-it-yourself bioweapons creation (“DIY biological labs”).  One post from a leading bioresearch and development company that has led on, and sells, CISPR tools and material ended by noting CRISPR’s “usefulness for genome locus-specific recruitment of proteins will likely only be limited by our imagination.”  And if we recall that Dream of Scipio quote from the introduction about how man is worse than beast because beasts are constrained by their lack of imagination but men are not, well, that is where this gets truly terrifying.  Indeed, the alarm has been soundly rung by many an expert on the soon-to-be-clear and present danger of this CRISPR technology’s ability to empower those with the most malevolent of imaginations.  We are, then, being presented with a brave new world of bioterrorism.

Thus, the guardrails—supposed or real—that may have offered protection from the use of bioweapons before are simply not as strong as they used to be.  Even if we accept human rationality as a bulwark, some of the biggest increases in terrorism involve suicide attackers and those embracing apocalyptic theology hoping to bring about a final world-ending confrontation, comforted by an ideology that tells them if they die as martyrs fighting for their cause they will ascend to heaven with a special spot waiting for them, with a degree of terrorists and terrorist groups concerned less with temporal self-preservation than at any other time in the modern era.  And whatever their motives, the modern world has not only already made bioweapons more accessible than ever to them, but will also dramatically expand this greater accessibility with the newest CRISPR technology that will itself spread rapidly.  Thus, we have both terrorists increasingly less worried about doing damage to themselves and a far greater number of actors that will be dabbling in bioweapons.

I had earlier discussed Max Boot’s lesson on technology at the end of his book Invisible Armies (“technology has been less important in guerrilla war than in conventional war”), but I left out the second part of his lesson’s heading, “but that may be changing,” to save it for here.  He does not mean the usefulness of technology on our end, either; he is talking about a change in favor of terrorists:

The role of weapons in this type of war [i.e. unconventional] could grow in the future if insurgents get their hands on chemical, biological, or especially nuclear weapons. A small terrorist cell the size of a platoon might then have more killing capacity than the entire army of a nonnuclear state like Brazil or Egypt.  That is a sobering thought.  It suggests that in the future low-intensity conflict could pose even greater problems for the world’s leading powers than it has in the past.  And, as we have seen, the problems of the past were substantial and varied.

And the type of weapons which are seeing the most rapid advancement in technology and ease of access are not chemical or nuclear, but biological.

In fact, as Karl Johnson, one veteran of fighting Ebola outbreaks, mentioned over a quarter-century ago:

It’s only a matter of months—years, at most—before people nail down the genes for virulence and airborne transmission in influenza, Ebola, Lassa, you name it.  And then any crackpot with a few thousand dollars’ worth of equipment and a college biology education under his belt could manufacture bugs that would make Ebola look like a walk around the park.

For Max Brooks, “Johnson’s prediction is right around the corner. With a little dark-web information and some secondhand lab equipment, anyone will soon be able to generate do-it-yourself blights in a basement lab and then release them back into the general population.”

Brooks echoes the earlier sentiments expressed herein that public policy attention given to threats posed by nuclear weapons are overemphasized relative those given to biological weapons.  As Brooks writes in Foreign Policy:

Genetic manipulation is the most dangerous threat humanity has ever faced because it allows anyone to spin straw into lethal gold. Unlike the hypothetical nuclear terrorist whom we’ve spent untold fortunes preparing for but who can’t act without acquiring precious, rare, and heavily guarded fissile material, the biohacker will be able to harvest germs from anywhere.  And unlike the nuclear terrorist, who gets only one shot at destruction, the biohacker’s bomb can copy itself over and over again.

If we look at the present and the future, then, without a doubt, terrorists and governments that have been and are pursuing the research and development of arsenals of bioweapons will only be doing so under even more favorable conditions to their goals as the future unfolds, including the near-future.  For these biowarrior wannabes, they are seeing what just something superflu/superpneumonia-ish like this coronavirus can do and are thinking of the damage and havoc they can wreak with far worse diseases.  And not only them but those who were on the fence about or reluctant to consider pursuing bioweapons programs will be seriously thinking that now.  Because the logical conclusion anyone contemplating biowarfare would draw from our current pandemic is that if coronavirus can do what it is doing now to America and the world, a deliberate, competent bioattack at a certain level could destroy the world as we know it.  We must realize that, to the degree that we are unsettled and shaken by looking at the state of our nation, our enemies are emboldened and more confident in their ability to do us harm.

Just imagine a brand new virus engineered to kill thirty percent—let alone fifty or seventy-five percent—of victims and that incapacitates most of the rest, one that spreads like wildfire, for which we have no immunity and no cure, which could cripple nations in days (not weeks), wiping out some people in key leadership positions along with millions of others, and incapacitating for days or weeks even those that survive.  Imagine the people unleashing such a disease are religious terrorists with apocalyptic death-wishes (plenty of those) or military officials from a government that has developed a secret immunity that only they and their countrymen have.  Imagine, while we are crippled, our enemy then offers the immunity it to allies or potentially new allies in the moment of crises, allowing it to destroy the nations as we know them that it deems enemies, remaking a world order with our successful enemy at the top.  Even staunch allies of ours would be tempted to fold in the face of a weapon for which the only defense comes with joining the new order. 

Think about the decades to come, in a world far more crowded where living space will literally be an issue, imagine an invasion by troops immune to the virus; with our leaders, government, and society—including the military—largely wiped out or crippled by the disease, how would an effective resistance—military or medical—to a simultaneous military and viral invasion be able to be mounted in the face of an organized enemy largely escaping the effects of such a disease?  And if the enemy offers immunity for a disease for which we have no cure and have no hope of dealing with medically in time in exchange for surrender, if the choice is between surrender and death, what happens to us and America as we know it?  The sixteenth-century Spanish conquistadors did not plan to use the smallpox virus as a biological weapon to mostly wipe out the mighty armies of the Aztecs and the Incas and bring their societies to their knees with it in the span of a blink of a historical eye, but smallpox obliged anyway, and the Spanish wiped those Empires easily from the face of the earth as a result.  The same devastating effects with the right cocktail of virus can happen today.

One case study shows how a just single person can easily cause over a dozen new coronavirus infections; imagine how few infected people would be required to mass-transmit a far worse virus like the hypothetical engineered one described a few paragraphs above. 

Now consider that out current coronavirus has already weakened and damaged democracy in some places —including in the U.S.—pushed it to the brink in others, and, at least in the case of Hungary, seems to have destroyed it.  And that does not even get to authoritarians and the authoritarian-leaning, for whom the virus has been an excellent excuse to crack down on freedoms.

The simple truth is, we are not prepared even for a naturally occurring pandemic like coronavirus, let alone a worse one than coronavirus, let alone even more so bioagents designed to as a weapon by our human enemies to kill us and crush our society.

How we appear now matters to our enemies, and not only was the U.S. caught off-guard, its overall response has exposed our weaknesses to the world (and hopefully ourselves).

VI.) The Harsh Truths Coronavirus Has Exposed

Every morning in the endless month of March, Americans woke up to find themselves citizens of a failed state.

—George Packer, “We Are Living in a Failed State/Underlying Conditions,” The Atlantic, June 2020 issue preview

I met fellow American Coco Tang years ago in Amman, Jordan, while she was on a Fulbright.  When not working as a consultant, she moonlights as a medic in some of the world’s worst hotspots.  Her postings have found her supporting as a medic both Iraqi Special Forces during the battle of Mosul against ISIS and OSCE patrols in Eastern Ukraine, working in refugee camps in Syria and Bangladesh, working in a clinic in Afghanistan, treating vulnerable women in the South Kivu region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, assessing local health in Ethiopia, and working in Sierra Leone as part of the Ebola response there.  She goes to some of the most dangerous places in the world to offer medical support, often in extreme humanitarian and medical emergencies.

And now she finds herself offering medical support in New York City during a pandemic, deployed by a medical company to the front lines in the war against COVID-19 here at home.

“When I worked in Iraq or Syria, there was an expectation of austerity. When you work in NYC, the austerity feels surreal.  Experiencing it in a place like NYC reminds me that COVID, in a lot of ways, is a great equalizer.”

That is what makes bioweapons as a weapon of war or terrorism so terrifying to powerful countries like America: it reduces the conventional operational planes in a way that is so unconventional and asymmetric that its extreme asymmetry rips the powerful far from their accustomed, advantaged positions.  

Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz just recently remarked that the U.S. coronavirus response makes it look like “like a third-world country.”  Tang has experienced a similar feeling in New York: “People expect pandemics to be a third-world problem. People expect problems like PPE [personal protective equipment] shortages to be a third-world problem.”  And, yet, here she was, grappling with serious equipment shortages during a pandemic here the U.S., and not in Appalachia, but in New York City, in Manhattan.  “COVID exposes that we aren’t any better than those countries we always look down on.  That at the end of the day, America is just a homeless person wearing fancy clothes.”

Tang was not even being asked about bioweapons when she made that statement, but she still nailed one of the central issues in biowarfare and unconventional warfare and how COVID-19 relates to it.  As mentioned earlier, Max Boot wrote that “all guerrilla and terrorist tactics…are designed to negate the firepower advantage of conventional forces.”  Bioweapons just do this on a deeper, more frightening scale, and coronavirus is showing us that natural pandemics can have the same effect.  In many ways, our current pandemic is a preview of a major bioweapons attack, and it has exposed us as woefully unprepared, with our government having been shown to be unable to protect us, thought of by many to be the primary role of government.  It could have, but it did not.  Americans’ faith in institutions has already been crumbling for some time, and now that level of faith will be even lower.

Feeling the need to explain why she was writing her article in March for The Atlantic, Anne Applebaum made her case in stark terms that reflected Tang’s imagery:

I am writing this so that Americans understand that our government is producing some of the same outcomes as Chinese communism.  This means that our political system is in far, far worse shape than we have hitherto understood.

…The United States, long accustomed to thinking of itself as the best, most efficient, and most technologically advanced society in the world, is about to be proved an unclothed emperor.

George Packer also wrote for The Atlantic, echoing Tang, Applebaum, and Stiglitz in a pieced titled “We Are Living in a Failed State” with the lead “The coronavirus didn’t break America. It revealed what was already broken.”  Packer does not hold back as he opens his article’s body:

When the virus came here, it found a country with serious underlying conditions, and it exploited them ruthlessly.  Chronic ills—a corrupt political class, a sclerotic bureaucracy, a heartless economy, a divided and distracted public—had gone untreated for years.  We had learned to live, uncomfortably, with the symptoms.  It took the scale and intimacy of a pandemic to expose their severity—to shock Americans with the recognition that we are in the high-risk category.

The crisis demanded a response that was swift, rational, and collective.  The United States reacted instead like Pakistan or Belarus—like a country with shoddy infrastructure and a dysfunctional government whose leaders were too corrupt or stupid to head off mass suffering.

…With no national plan—no coherent instructions at all—families, schools, and offices were left to decide on their own whether to shut down and take shelter.

Explaining how we got to this state, Packer writes that “all the programs defunded, stockpiles depleted, and plans scrapped meant that we had become a second-rate nation. Then came the virus and this strange defeat.”  Not only are we losing this war, this war is forcing us to see our national ugliness by relentlessly shining a spotlight onto it and forcing us to look nonstop.  Packer, again, puts it eloquently: “If the pandemic really is a kind of war, it’s the first to be fought on this soil in a century and a half.  Invasion and occupation expose a society’s fault lines, exaggerating what goes unnoticed or accepted in peacetime, clarifying essential truths, raising the smell of buried rot.”

In periods of pestilence, there is a tendency for those fault lines to be racial, ethnic, and religious, with those types of hatreds being only too eagerly released and minority groups being blamed for the outbreaks.

Just to name one foreign example for today, in Hindu chauvinist Narendra Modi’s India, anti-Islamic bigotry is becoming mixed up in the country’s response to coronavirus.

If we go back in time, ignorant and/or covetous Christians in fourteenth-century Europe blamed Jews for the Black Death and massacred many thousands of them across the continent, destroying whole communities and ethnically cleansing Jews from entire regions (just in Mainz alone, over 6,000 Jews perished from a plague-inspired pogrom in 1349).  If we fast-forward to today, Jews are also being blamed in very anti-Semitic fashion by a range of extremists around the world (including in America) for unleashing coronavirus as some sort of organized plot, bringing down “God’s” vengeance in the form of the virus, or of profiting off the pandemic (or a combination of these); billionaire Jewish philanthropist George Soros is even frequently accused of creating the virus.

In the U.S., Asian-Americans and Asians are also being attacked—including physically—and blamed for the virus “because” of the virus’s Chinese origin, with anti-Asian hate crimes very much on the rise, yet the federal government is not being proactive in pushing back against this hate, with problematic language coming from the White House itself only adding fuel to the fire.

There is also the persistent racism and pervasive inequality that long-plagued American society, with socioeconomic status, harsher living and working conditions, and unequal access to quality healthcare experienced disproportionately by certain groups of people contributing to their having chronic health issues that make the virus more serious and more deadly for them than for members of more advantaged communities.  Inequality also makes it far harder for some disadvantaged groups to take appropriate actions to protect themselves; in the words of Charles Blow writing for The New York Times, “Staying at home is a privilege.  Social distancing is a privilege.  The people who can’t must make terrible choices: Stay home and risk starvation or go to work and risk contagion.”  Problems of race, ethnicity, and class are only made worse by coronavirus.

In particular, the inequalities that have long been inflicted upon African-Americans have been resulting in incredibly disproportionately high deaths and serious infections from COVID-19 for African-Americans.  Just in Chicago, by the end of the first week of April, African-Americans had accounted for seventy percent of COVID-19 deaths even though they just made up thirty percent of the population.  And Chicago is hardly alone, with major disparities for black Americans in terms of coronavirus being the norm across the country.

Other groups in America are also suffering disproportionately from this pandemic.  Long-neglected Native Americans are also particularly vulnerable and experiencing extremely high rates of coronavirus problems.  Latinos are also quite disproportionately affected by COVID-19.  And lower-income people of all backgrounds have relatively borne the brunt of not only the virus itself, but also the massive economic harm inflicted by the pandemic.

As Brooks noted in that mid-March interview, “All of these terrible, terrible trends that we’ve been sowing for so long are coming back to haunt us right at this minute.”

Our unending, longstanding American divisions—politically partisan and otherwise—are only intensified by this unconventional, asymmetric pandemic, much like the unconventional, asymmetric threats from the Vietnam and Iraq Wars and Russian election interference aggravated existing American societal fault lines.  The virus, rather than showing our ability to unite, is instead exposing—even more than recent politics—our capacity for coming apart.  For Packer,

the virus should have united Americans against a common threat. With different leadership, it might have. Instead, even as it spread from blue to red areas, attitudes broke down along familiar partisan lines.  The virus also should have been a great leveler. You don’t have to be in the military or in debt to be a target—you just have to be human.  But from the start, its effects have been skewed by the inequality that we’ve tolerated for so long.

Then there is the black hole where our coordinated national response should have been.

The most extreme example of this has manifested itself in a disturbing, unprecedented, and stunning situation that just unfolded in Maryland, exemplifying a breakdown in the constitutional order and national fabric not seen since the era of desegregation.  This stunning incident hints at China’s twentieth-century warlord era, when the Qing Dynasty’s central government broke down and basically melted away in so many places to such levels that China de facto became a relatively large number of separate states run by warlords who had to step up and provide leadership in the void left by the Qing.  They also had to contend with the Chinese Nationalists and Chinese Communists as everyone fought each other, with the Japanese Imperial Army and WWII eventually merging into the conflicts; dysfunction and chaos reigned (and incidentally, remember, this situation would eventually see the most extensive use of bioweapons in the history of warfare).  To return to the American present, in the absence of timely or coherent support from the federal government, Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland and his wife, Maryland First Lady Yumi Hogan—of Korean descent—negotiated with South Korea to obtain 500,000 coronavirus tests.  The process took twenty-two days and the tests were flown over from South Korea, with the Korea Air passenger plane—which would normally have landed at Dulles International Airport in Virginia, just outside Washington, DC—being diverted to Baltimore-Washington International airport in Maryland, the first time that airline has ever flown to that the airport.  This was done purposefully to prevent the seizure of the tests by the federal government, which had earlier seized three million protective masks ordered by Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker for his state, among other seizures from governors taking matters into their own hands because of the Trump Administration’s unwillingness to directly supply the states with necessary quantities of emergency supplies.  It is remarkable that states that had asked for federal aid, had their requests denied or unfulfilled, then followed the Administration’s advice to procure their own supplies then saw federal authorities seize those very supplies.  It is also worth noting that both Govs. Hogan and Baker are Republicans along with Trump, not to say that should make a difference but to point out how even fellow Republicans are unable to work with the current Administration.  Also out fear of the tests being seized at the airport, Hogan had “a large contingent” of Maryland National Guard troops and State Police sent to secure the tests and transport them to “an undisclosed location” that is purposely being kept secret from the federal government. Those tests are still being guarded by Maryland National Guard and State Police at that location to protect them from possible federal seizure, with Hogan saying the cargo “was like Fort Knox to us” since the tests were “going to save the lives of thousands of our citizens” and noting the earlier federal seizures of supplies ordered by other states.

In effect, Maryland’s sitting governor—in the same political party as the president—ran a clandestine operation to prevent life-saving equipment Maryland taxpayers had bought and paid for from falling into the clutches of the Trump Administration after that administration had failed to provide Maryland with requested aid and those coronavirus tests are still being guarded at a secret location by security forces under the command of the governor. 

In case this is not clear, that is a total breakdown of the relationship between Maryland and the federal government, with Maryland essentially rebelling against the Trump Administration’s potential designs and actual authority.  Gov. Hogan essentially became a de facto rogue governor—much like warlords in China after the Qing dynasty disintegrated and left a power vacuum of chaos in its wake—when it came to securing and protecting coronavirus tests for Marylanders.  One can only hope this is the first and last example of anything like this happening during the pandemic, but that hope is not carried with any certainty.

To add to Maryland’s woes, the state just canceled a $12.5 million order for other important emergency equipment—1.5 million protective masks and 110 ventilators—from a brand-new firm founded by two Republican political operatives.  The company was drastically overcharging for the masks and the items were supposed to ship by mid-April, but there is no indication they have shipped, and despite repeated requests from Maryland on the order status, no information on the shipping has been provided, prompting the cancellation at a time when Maryland is seeing a surge in cases and deaths.

Yes, right now, we are seeing states, the private sector, and the Executive Branch beg for, haggle, and tussle over urgently-needed PPE and other lifesaving supplies.  In other words, too much is being left to chance, the market, the whims of suppliers, and the relative means of various states even in the middle of a pandemic, with the private sector playing a mighty role, one that involves price and bidding wars.  The result of this top-down-driven logistical nightmare is that vital medical supplies and equipment are in short supply in too many places in America fighting this pandemic.  People, both patients and healthcare workers, are getting sick and dying after being in situations where they did not have what they should have had.

Even if the vaunted Defense Production Act—a Korean War-era law greatly empowering the government to direct industry in times of emergency—had been robustly and properly executed (and it still has not), a tremendous amount of the logistics would still have come down to an ad hoc approach.  And the ad hoc approach is only adding to the confusion and chaos.  As Gen. Russel Honoré (who helped lead America’s response in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina) explained about this current crisis, the main choices for logistics are between the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA, a civilian agency under the Department of Homeland Security, or DHS) and the military.  But, as he also explained, FEMA is designed to handle one or several localized emergencies at once, not a full-fledged national one; it simply does not have the capacity to run as the point organization for this pandemic.  At the same time, the military does not have any recent experience managing national operations across most or all U.S. states at once (or operating withing domestic local, state, and federal legal systems) and much of the military’s operations would have to be also handled in an ad hoc way, with dozens of senior officers having to liaise with dozens of governors and far more local officials to coordinate efforts in addition to private-sector entities; they would rely heavily on their civilian counterparts, most of whom would have little or no training or understanding of how to respond to such a situation or work with military officials; one hopes coronavirus will swiftly bring about a filling-in of these gaps in expertise).  Writing for MWI, Mississippi National Guard Maj. Dennis Bittle notes that National Guard troops have been deployed as part of coronavirus responses in all fifty states, the District of Columbia, and multiple U.S. territories, yet the existing frameworks for Guard deployments to be robust parts of these local responses are far from ideal in this unprecedented situation.  Specifically, federalizing Guard units would be highly problematic since so many Guard personnel are much-needed local first-responders in their civilian roles.

Without proper supplies allocated, distribution networks and equipment, and the personnel to run and move under the direction of the government, as noted, individual states are having to compete in bidding wars and fights over supplies with each other, businesses, the federal government, and even foreign countries just to get desperately needed life-saving supplies.  In what Gen. Honoré called a supply chain situation that he has “never heard…before in my life [that]… look[s] like they have let the literal wolf inside the henhouse,” states are being bypassed for direct aid by the federal government for corporations to then sell to states and, overall, there is little to no oversight, no singular body distributing supplies nationally based on objective needs-based criteria (by mid-April, Montana, with few cases, was getting over $300,000 in federal aid per case, while New York, the epicenter of coronavirus in America, was just getting $12,000 per case). 

There is even at least the appearance that federal disbursement and non-disbursement is happening as a form of political favoritism, as quid pro quos.  On top of all this, the federal government’s own stockpile was nearly empty as of early April apart from federally-confiscated supplies bought and paid for (and needed) by private hospitals and state and local authorities, activity we delved into earlier with the shocking case from Maryland.  Together these factors are just further amplifying senses of desperation, helplessness, and violation of trust. 

Adding to those panicked feelings are how the White House has handled communications: as U.S. Army Reserve Maj. Wonny Kim writes also for MWI, all this is further exacerbated “by public communications that has been haphazard, to say the least,” and in visible ways for all to see that undermine America’s standing in the world and encourage our authoritarian adversaries.  Our own officials have even concluded that Russian intelligence is even “likely” using the pandemic to gain information on U.S. logistical weaknesses.

Sadly, we have seen with the federal response and in other responses that political leaders are free to ignore or contradict the advice of medical and intelligence experts, and suppress or remove truth-tellers from important positions, thus, simply having expert advisors does not cut it; to some degree, both voting populations and politicians will have to take seriously the need for familiarity with pandemic response; voters should be choosing those with a demonstrated and committed deference both to experts and to self-learning and voters must then hold those leaders accountable; if they do not, they will be rewarding non-seriousness with high office, encouraging other politicians to follow suit.  These are, after all, the basics of democracy, and if voters do not reward competence, seriousness, and expertise, a great many of them will, to some degree, reap what they so after failing in their role as citizens.  In this time of pandemic, for Masha Gessen, “it’s very important to continue to notice the ways in which our government is failing us, even if those ways have become familiar and exhausting.”  The hope is that this pandemic will teach voters to take their votes more seriously, as George Packer recognizes: “We can learn from these dreadful days that stupidity and injustice are lethal; that, in a democracy, being a citizen is essential work; that the alternative to solidarity is death. After we’ve come out of hiding and taken off our masks, we should not forget what it was like to be alone.”

Brooks agrees that, ultimately, we as citizens in a democracy are the ones who are responsible:

Everything that goes wrong in China with this virus is directly laid at the feet of Xi Jinping.  He has all the power, so he has all the responsibility.  Every death is on his hands.

But, by the same token, we are responsible for our own deaths in this country.  If we don’t like our leaders—well, then, look in the mirror; we put them there. We voted for them.  If we don’t like the way the CDC is handling this virus, well, who voted to defund the CDC?  Who didn’t listen to the cries of health professionals saying, “Wait a minute, they’re defunding the CDC!”?  We didn’t listen.  We were like, “Oh, my god.  Friends is on Netflix.  I have bingeing to do!  I have things!  There’s an app where I can put bunny ears on myself and send it out!”

In a dictatorship like China, you can blame the top.  In a democracy, in a republic, we have to blame [who we see in] the mirror.

But the main national election is still a while away as the pandemic rages.  Given the systemic failures, just allowing the military to take over the response is tempting—whether now or in the future—and while that carries with it its own issues, it is clear the current civilian structures do not have the capacity to handle this type of threat, except maybe if our leaders are extraordinary, and most of the time, that is not the quality of leadership we empower.

At the same time, coronavirus is exposing the military’s own shortcomings within itself, with Army Reserve Capt. James Long noting in another MWI piece that “our lack of preparation, in the form of adaptive digital networks and robust connective tissue with civilian partners,” is further adding to the damage being done by the virus.  And, while Dr. Jacob Stoil and Army Maj. Bethany Landeck noted in an additional MWI article that, in past major wars, large-scale epidemic response was an important part of U.S. military operations, that has not been the case for decades.  Thus, though the civilian apparatuses have in many ways failed in the current crisis, we cannot expect the current military to be a replacement.  This sentiment is echoed in yet another MWI piece penned by U.S. Air Force Center for Strategic Deterrence Studies Director Al Mauroni titled “The Military Is Not the Nation’s Emergency Room Doctor.” For him, the military should be ready to support civilian efforts in a pandemic, but not to take them over.

In another piece, I will release my proposal to reform the government to put us in a far better position to deal with biodefense: the creation of a Cabinet-level Department of Pandemic Preparedness and Response (DPPR).  But for now, we will simply leave this section with a recognition of how woefully inadequate the current structure of the government is to deal with these type of threats and how dependent the it is on having exceptional leadership that is able to quickly make all the right decisions on an ad hoc basis, an overall unlikely outcome.

VII.) Epilogue: Coronavirus and History, Russia and Italy, the War for Reality, and the Nexus of It All

We will never find an explanation…for the evils done by people against other people, or for the love that drove the doctors to bring smallpox to an end.  Yet after all they had done, we still held smallpox in our hands, with a grip of death that would never let it go.  All I knew was that the dream of total eradication had failed.  The virus’s last strategy for survival was to bewitch its host and become a source of power.  We could eradicate smallpox from nature, but we could not uproot the virus from the human heart.

—Richard Preston (author of The Hot Zone), The Demon in the Freezer (2002)

Eradication

It was one of the most inspiring moments of the entire Cold War.

In what has been acknowledged by many to be “the single most important triumph of public health in human history,” on December 9, 1979, the WHO certified smallpox eradicated from nature, and, to much fanfare at the May, 1980 session of the World Health Assembly (the WHO’s governing body) formally celebrated this achievement publicly with a unified declaration acknowledging the singular triumph.  The disease—terrorizing humanity for thousands of years and responsible for more deaths than any single other disease—may have wiped 300-500 million people in the twentieth century alone, but now, no more.

This triumph was the culmination of two decades of effort from the global healthcare community led by the WHO, first with an effort inspired and proposed by a top Soviet scientist in 1959 that fell far short, with many very skeptical that any disease could be “eradicated,” so support for the efforts was lukewarm and halfhearted.  Still, the effort did drastically reduce infection and mortality of the disease.  Some did not give up on the dream of total eradication , though.  A second effort picked up where the first faltered, with the Intensified Smallpox Eradication Program beginning in 1967, a year in which some two million died from the disease out of 10-15 million cases (rapid vaccination saved many infected before symptoms worsened, reducing the death rate, and these figures were down from some 50 million cases annually in the 1950s).

For the next decade, doctors and medical staff scoured the globe—braving even natural disasters and civil wars—to find all cases of smallpox and then ring-vaccinate everyone around the cases, much like cutting down trees in a forest on fire to stop the spread of the fire.  The technique worked extremely well, and the last recorded case of naturally-occurring smallpox in world history was in 1977 in Somalia.  The following year, another person died because of a mishap at a university lab that was studying smallpox.  Efforts were kept up to keep the virus from making a comeback, and they were successful: by the end of 1979, the virus was certified to be extinct from nature—the first and last disease thus far to suffer that fate—and there has not been a known case since.

In the words of Richard Preston, those carrying out the campaign

had forged themselves into an army of peace.  With a weapon in their hands, a needle with two points, they had searched the corners of the earth for the virus, opening every door and lifting every scrap of cloth.  They would not rest, they would not stand aside, and they gave all they had until variola [i.e., smallpox] was gone.  No greater deed was ever done in medicine, and no better thing ever came from the human spirit.

At the height of the Cold War, the two rivals tearing the world apart—the United States and the Soviet Union—came together to lead one of the great services for humanity that history has ever known.  Two bitter foes that were constantly threatening each other with nuclear annihilation proved that, even amid the greatest of disputes and tensions, enemies could still work together to make the word a better place, to save lives and put their common interest and those of humanity as a whole ahead of their differences.  There are few examples in history of anything like this, and nothing that matches the amount of lives saved by this common effort during a global geopolitical conflict between the two lead actors.

Eventually , smallpox would only be only officially preserved in two facilities: America’s CDC in Atlanta and Russia’s Vector Institute (the Russian State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology VECTOR that was a major facility of the Soviet biowarfare program known, as discussed, as Biopreparat) in Koltsovo, Russia, the top  government disease research facilities in America and Russia, respectively.

By the time Preston would write his 2002 book on smallpox, The Demon in the Freezer, the then-top scientist at the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USARMRIID, at Fort Detrick, Maryland, where the U.S. earlier had located a big chunk of its now-defunct biowarfare program), Dr. Peter Jahrling (played by Topher Grace in last year’s NetGeo miniseries, The Hot Zone, based on Preston’s book), would frequently quip:  “If you believe smallpox is sitting in only two freezers, I have a bridge for you to buy. The genie is out of the lamp.” 

Weaponization

As mentioned earlier, since the Eradication and at the end of the Cold War, because of high-level defectors from Biopreparat, the world learned that the Soviet Union even at the height of the Eradication has a massive biowarfare program that included smallpox, and the Soviets were not the only ones pursuing bioweapons and smallpox stocks, also as discussed earlier.  Additionally, it became clear that the Soviets were working with smallpox outside the designated Vector Institute.

At the same time, with the increasing concerns about global warming in the 1990s, we get into the possibility of smallpox in the bodies of long-dead victims frozen in the now melting tundra permafrost, smallpox that could be unleashed and infect yet again from nature.

But the main concern is not the tundra smallpox.

Now we see how the Soviets got their lamp and genie.

We learned from the highest-level Biopreparat defector (Col. Kanatjan Alibekov, now “Ken Alibek”) that when there were raging epidemics of smallpox in India during the Eradication in the 1960s, the Soviets had a medical team operating there in 1967, helping to push back the spread of the disease there.  That team was accompanied by agents of the K.G.B., the Soviets’ notorious intelligence and security service.  They were on a mission to find a particularly nasty strain of smallpox, which they did in 1967, bringing the super-sub-strain—known as India-1 or India-1967—back to the Soviet Union with them.  This sub-strain was a far more virulent and stable sub-strain than other strains of variola major (already the far deadlier of two main smallpox strains, the weaker one being variola minor) and one that has a far shorter incubation period and was harder to diagnose, making it ideal for bioweapons relative to existing variola major stockpiles the Soviets had at the time.  Within a few years, India-1 was their flagship strain for smallpox bioweapons, with twenty tons of it being produced every year to keep it as fresh and deadly as possible. 

The K.G.B has used the well-intentioned Eradication program as a cover to find the raw materials for a nightmare bioweapon, and it succeeded in keeping this secret from the West for two decades, during which it carried out intense research, development, and testing with the sub-strain.

We should still be thankful for the visionaries and dedicated health professionals from the Soviet Union who helped make Eradication a reality, and for the Soviet Government’s generous donations of enormous amounts of smallpox vaccine to fuel the effort.  The sincerity of these health workers should not be questioned. 

However, as is so often in the world, even where there are good actors and motives, there can be bad ones right alongside them, and this was the case with the Soviet Eradication effort.  As Preston notes:

We will never find an explanation…for the evils done by people against other people, or for the love that drove the doctors to bring smallpox to an end.  Yet after all they had done, we still held smallpox in our hands, with a grip of death that would never let it go.  All I knew was that the dream of total eradication had failed.  The virus’s last strategy for survival was to bewitch its host and become a source of power.  We could eradicate smallpox from nature, but we could not uproot the virus from the human heart.

2020: A Year of Threat Convergences

If we jump forward to Italy now during its terrible coronavirus outbreak, we may be seeing a repeat of history.

As noted earlier, Italy was requesting U.S. assistance from our troops stationed there since World War II because we had not been proactive in offering help to our beleaguered NATO ally.  But President Vladimir Putin of Russia beat us to the punch, embarrassingly preempting significant U.S. military aid by nearly a month and one-upping us in a public relations nightmare by sending a military medical aid convoy to Italy, to much Russian fanfare and broadcast constantly with gusto by Russian media to the rest of the world.  The mission was dubbed “From Russia with Love” (sharing a title with one of the most famous James Bond films and novels) with that phrase written in Italian on a graphic of two hearts—one colored in the colors Russia’s flag, one in Italy’s—placed on the Russian military vehicles delivering the aid.  “From Russia with Love” was also, tellingly, written on the graphic in English above the Italian even though the aid was being delivered to Italy.  In the wider context of the geopolitical tug-of-war for Europe between Russia and the U.S., Russia scored another win, again beating the U.S. in a form of unconventional, asymmetric warfare.

But not all was as advertised.

The highly respected Italian daily La Stampa—one of Italy’s oldest newspapers—did some digging, and found that, according to anonymous Italian government officials, the aid Russia sent was not particularly helpful and the whole effort was more about public-relations and an effort to undermine NATO, with one official saying that “Eighty percent of Russian supplies are totally useless or of little use to Italy” and two Italian military officials echoing that sentiment. 

Unsurprisingly, the Russian Defence Ministry directly attacked and seemed to threaten La Stampa and the journalist behind the story, Jacopo Iacoboni, calling his story “fake news,” making sure to post the smear in English.  Even in this delicate situation, the Italian Defense and Foreign Affairs Ministries, while thanking Russia for its aid, condemned the Russian Defence Ministry’s attacks on the Italian free press.  The mission is now winding down, seemingly not having been very effective.

The disinformational, propagandistic aspects of the whole operation only became more evident when Italy revealed that it had received only 150 ventilators from Russia (not the 600 the Russian Ambassador to Italy claimed) and mysterious WhatsApp groups surfaced offering 200 euros to Italians to make and post videos praising the Russian “aid” effort on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram (less but still some money for posts with just text).

Along with the aid, Russia sent over 120 of its top officers from one of Russia’s main Radiological, Chemical and Biological Weapons Defense (RChBD) military units.  If one buys Russia’s stated aim for this outing, it is somewhat strange that it sent biowarfare specialists to Italy, which is supposed to have some of the best personnel, equipment, and expertise in when it comes to nuclear, biological, and chemical unit capacities.  The unit is also suspiciously being led in Gen. Sergey Kikot, the number-two commander of all of Russia’s RChBD forces.

Gen. Kikot is perhaps most famous internationally for being one of Russia’s most prominent disinformationists and apologists for Assad’s regime as part of Russia’s overall Syria disinformation operations and support for Assad, with Kikot issuing strong denials that Assad used chemical weapons against his own people and that the White Helmets—the brave Syrian civilian volunteers who try to save other civilians in the immediate aftermath of Syrian regime and Russian military attacks—were staging fake footage of such attacks, absurd statements which have gone against the findings of NATO allies, experts, human rights groups, and watchdogs, including the United Nations-associated Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), the chief international chemical weapons inspections authority.

It would be unthinkable in this kind of a situation for there not to be intelligence officers from Russia’s military intelligence branch, the G.R.U., embedded within Russia’s unit in Italy.  In this case, being deployed in a NATO country during a pandemic is an invaluable opportunity for intelligence collection and even for intelligence operations. 

But it is also worth noting that the G.R.U. is often the tip of Putin’s spear in both the Kremlin’s conventional and unconventional operations.  The G.R.U. has been active on the ground in Russia’s invasion, occupation, and illegal annexation of Crimea and its support for rebels in Eastern Ukraine.  It also has had its commandos—Russia’s elite Spetsnaz special forces—play important roles on the battlefield in Syria, including in Aleppo and Palmyra; it was even overseeing the Russian mercenaries who attacked a joint U.S.-S.D.F. position in Syria in February, 2018.  Furthermore, the G.R.U. has been one of Putin’s point organizations in his war on Western democracy, engaging in cyberwarfare, destabilization, and disinformation efforts against NATO countries in Europe and other U.S. allies, in addition to its infamous efforts against the U.S. during the 2016 election (what I have called the First Russo-American Cyberwar). 

But when thinking about why elite Russian biowarfare specialists and G.R.U. intelligence operatives would be in Italy, we should perhaps think less about 2016 and more about 1967, when the K.G.B. accompanied medical teams to India during the Smallpox Eradication Program.

The G.R.U. is one of the successor agencies to the K.G.B.

It is uncertain what all the precise activity the Russian biowarfare units and any G.R.U. operatives in Italy have been up to, but this scenario seems awfully familiar.  Whatever their purpose, this whole episode should serve as a reminder of the ability of the Russians to see unconventional opportunities in all situations, including public health crises, and to reinforce how unprepared we are in general to stand up to such efforts.  Years from now, we hopefully will not be caught off guard if we discover the Russians have engineered some sort of supercoronavirus, nor, on a far simpler level, allow Russia or another rival to upstage our efforts to assist our allies and friends abroad during a pandemic.

We also must hope that we are better prepared here at home in a far deeper sense than adding to and reorganizing our federal government’s organizational chart.  My soon-to-be-released proposal for a Cabinet-level Department of Pandemic Preparedness and Response would be a major leap forward in a big-picture national policy sense, but there is so much more that needs to be done throughout our society.  For it was not just our government that failed us, but different aspects of our media, our business sector, our religious institutions across faiths, celebrities and various other elites, plenty of rank-and-file Americans along with them, our very culture itself.  And it is the societal failings that are embedded deep in our society that have not only been major factors in making our response to COVID-19 so shockingly poor, but have also have contributed significantly to many of our failures in unconventional, asymmetric warfare over decades.  It is those societal failings that were so brilliantly exploited by Russia in 2016, too, but Russia has also used our weaknesses to help amplify and perpetuate our failing coronavirus response, finding plenty of existing conspiracy theories, mistrust, and hate in America to amplify and plenty of Americans willing to believe and peddle Russia’s own false narratives, whether in 2016 or today in our current coronavirus climate.

In other words, at each step of the way, millions of Americans were gleefully along for the ride, the very definitions of useful idiots, taking Russia’s disinformation and making it their misinformation.  That is happening even now, in our 2020 election.

Putin is himself former K.G.B., and part of his genius is that he and his intelligence-crowd’s longstanding K.G.B.-inspired techniques accurately assessed our domestic weaknesses, figuring out how to magnify many of them with their own operations in a variety of settings, from elections to pandemics: they look for anything and anyone that will help divide America and make us weaker, with this pandemic just being a “gift” of an opportunity for the Kremlin.

America certainly had its own strains of ignorance without any Russian meddling (to quote the great J. G. A. Pocock, “it is notorious that American culture is haunted by myths, many of which arise out of the attempt to escape history and then regenerate it”), but Russian disinformation and cyberwarfare thrives on this ignorance.  As part of Moscow’s campaign to knowingly falsely blame the U.S. for a multitude of things—from the downing of civilian airliner MH17 (shot down over Ukraine in 2014 by a Russian missile given by Russia to pro-Russian Ukrainian separatists_ to the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster in the then-Soviet Union—Russia is now blaming the U.S. for engineering the coronavirus as a bioweapon (or sometimes 5G is to blame; yeah, the Russians are a huge part of that, too).  This follows similar efforts to blame the U.S. for spreading Ebola, HIV/AIDS, even swine flu.  The Kremlin has also been boosting America’s dangerous anti-vaxxer movement.  Overall, when it comes to health, Russia has engaged in campaigns to stoke Americans’ fears of diseases, make us more susceptible to disease, and weaken our overall trust in U.S. healthcare and medical expertise, trust that is essential for any kind of response to a public health crisis in a democracy to be effective.

The same organs of disinformation behind Russia’s “firehose of falsehood” (to quote a RAND report) for all recent disinformation campaigns are being utilized in this latest coronavirus campaign, and, like the other campaigns, it is achieving results: a recent Pew study showed that close to a third of Americans believe in the totally unsubstantiated conspiracy theory that coronavirus was man-made in some sort of lab and is not natural, with one quarter saying they are not sure either way.  To be fair, top elements of the Trump Administration are pushing an unfounded conspiracy theory that the new coronavirus was created in a Chinese lab in Wuhan, where the outbreak originated, and China has been joining Russia in promoting the idea that the U.S. is behind the virus.  While the survey does not specify where the virus originated or who was behind it, the right-wing in America has been pushing the Chinese lab theory and, as noted earlier, anti-Semitic explanations and sentiments regarding the virus.  The Chinese lab theory is now favored by the president himself, along with Sec. of State Mike Pompeo and top Trump trade and China advisor Peter Navarro.  Apart from numerous and varied other widespread disinformation campaigns and misinformation vectors, very active and present Russian disinformation still makes up an important portion of the overall disinformation being bandied about, contributing to an overall atmosphere of conspiracy, distrust, confusion, fear, and just plain bad information, casting doubt and adding more non-reality based noise to the conversation, so regardless of whether Americans—who are being widely exposed to these conspiracy theories—are convinced by Russian propaganda or not that the U.S. that “created” the virus, the Russian efforts still contribute substantially to a deteriorating informational climate.  Specifically, these efforts further feed an atmosphere suggesting specifically that coronavirus was created in a lab somewhere while generally helping to saturate that atmosphere with bad information, muddying the waters and obfuscating the truth for many Americans.   It certainly does not help that the top current U.S. political leaders and many lower-level politicians in addition to media outlets in the country are embracing similar false theories even if the culprits “making” the virus vary.  And three other factors serve as additional amplifiers poisoning the atmosphere here: that Americans are increasingly subscribing to fantastical conspiracy theories in general, that conspiracy theories are more attractive and powerful in times of crisis, and that studies confirm a large portion of Americans are simply bad at discerning fact from fiction and are easily confused.

These dynamics are as good as any at illustrating how Russian efforts and homegrown efforts and attitudes play together like a symphony orchestra performance conducted by Putin to play to his ends.  The last concert he conducted, with his Kremlin Symphony Orchestra performing original Putin works, did not go very well for us, and this new one could very well be worse.

In the midst of Russia’s coronavirus disinformation and 2020 election interference efforts targeting the U.S., as another example of both ends feeding into Russian interests, the Trump Administration allowed Russia—even as a hostile actor—to deliver coronavirus aid to us on American soil in a publicized way, a shocking yet par-for-the-course act for the current administration. 

And so Russia keeps up its public relations stunts and disinformation, hoping to deflect attention from incriminating events at home as coronavirus infections soar to make Russia alternate with Brazil as the third and second-most infected country in the world even by the official numbers, with the reality being that there are virtually certainly government efforts to suppress a far grimmer actual toll (some medical staff are reportedly being instructed not to record coronavirus deaths as caused by coronavirus).  There have even been three Russian medical professionals questioning or distraught by Russia’s coronavirus response who “fell” out of windows in just two weeks, two dying and one critically injured; such “accidents” or worse tend to befall a wide variety or whistleblowers, journalists, critics of the Putin, and others Putin wants to make disappear.

What will not disappear are the threats posed by Russian disinformation, cyberwarfare, election interference, and the Kremlin’s undisclosed biowarfare program.

Unless the U.S. has since obtained direct and continued intelligence on the exact nature of the genetically engineered strains and man-made Frankenstein viruses described by top defectors—highly unlikely—it is almost certain that the U.S. would be defenseless against such bioagents deliberately designed to overcome existing vaccines, medicine, and treatment.  Looking at how much coronavirus has crippled the U.S., if America was not able to work on specific remedies designed to counter these Russian superagents by directly studying them over time directly and rigorously testing biodefense measures—new vaccines, medicine—against these new agents, it would be impossible for us to come up with anything that could effectively protect Americans from them, let alone have the remedies mass-manufactured and ready for distribution and safe usage.  A first strike with such weapons would likely be the only strike necessary to incapacitate most of America’s defenses and to destroy America as we know it.  As discussed, apocalyptic-minded bioterrorists would be more likely to use a nightmare bioweapon.  Yet however unlikely such a strike from a state like Russia would be, being ill-prepared will only increase that likelihood.

The current international Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) treaty prohibiting offensive bioweapons and related research—to which Russia is a signatory—is a legal one, but without any verification or control mechanisms.  We must absolutely have a more forceful international bioweapons inspections system and use all peaceful means to force Russia into compliance.  Ideally, this would be through the United Nations, except Russia will clearly veto such binding frameworks and resolutions, or, even if it did not, would surely veto any Security Council efforts to specifically hold Russia to account or to submit to and/or comply with robust inspections.  It will instead fall on the U.S., Canada, the EU, Japan, and other allied and like-minded nations to collectively impose their own sanctions on Russia to force compliance or demonstrate a stiff economic price for non-compliance, much like was the case after Russia’s invasions of Ukraine’s eastern and Crimean regions.  Setting an example with Russia would set a proper tone for the unfolding century, and other rogue states would also see the costs of pursuing bioweapons and be more inclined to play by the rules if Russia is brought to heel.  And each state that is brought to heel can be part of a mandatory coalition to combat bioterrorism as part of their respective arrangements, with the BWC being rewritten to include robust counterbioterrorism provisions and severe penalties for supporting or failing to act against bioterrorism or for failing to properly secure sensitive materials involving deadly disease research.

A Collective Responsibility to Do Better

The actions suggested just above constitute dealing with unconventional, asymmetric warfare at the highest levels.

But the lowest levels are just as important.

We must also deal with our societal ills that make us so susceptible to disinformation, Russian or otherwise.  To a significant degree, preparing for unconventional, asymmetric information warfare and cyberwarfare also prepares us for pandemics, biowarfare, and bioterrorism: at the core of each is a willingness to defer to experts and to cultivate our minds to be able to properly vet what is coming from a position of factual vetting and properly understanding who and what is targeting us to take advantage of our weaknesses, biases, and predispositions.  Leaving our minds susceptible to disinformation and misinformation—whether it is about our elections and candidates or our public health system and information on a deadly disease—is like allowing our computer networks to go without security software, allowing our enemies to manipulate us and take advantage of our weaknesses to weaken our nation.  Thus, whether dealing with coronavirus, bioweapons, or Russian disinformation, taking concrete steps to tackle one will often pay off in our fight against the others.  And we have little reason to doubt that Russia will integrate coronavirus into its ambitious 2020 election interference—or, more aptly termed, Second Russo-American Cyberwar—or doubt that Russia is looking at and developing ways to turn coronavirus into a bioweapon as it did with smallpox and so many other bioagents in the past. 

Hence, biosecurity, disinformation security, and election security come together as part of the larger unconventional, asymmetric landscape.

In her conclusion to her must-read article “Disinformation, Democracy, and the Rule of Law,” former FBI counterintelligence agent and current Yale University senior lecturer on national security Asha Rangappa notes the complex, multidimensional aspects of Russia’s unconventional, asymmetric warfare against the United States:

Much of the public discussion on Russia’s disinformation operations in the U.S. has focused on their impact on the 2016 election and how they might affect elections in the future.  But the damage that Russia seeks to inflict through its disinformation campaign isn’t limited to electoral contests.  Rather, its long-term strategy has been to erode faith in the primary pillars upon which our democracy is based—including the rule of law and the institutions that support it.  So far, Russia’s efforts are yielding fruit, and technological and legislative fixes alone will be insufficient to counter them.  Defending against Russian disinformation in the long term will require a strategy to fortify America’s social fabric with an understanding of shared civic values that can serve as a prophylactic against Russia’s future attacks. 

She makes it all too clear that the government alone cannot save us from the manipulations of Russia’s disinformation and other techniques of division:

The framing of the Russian disinformation threat as a cybersecurity issue makes it tempting to look to the government, or to social media companies, to fix the problem. Regulatory and technological solutions are needed, and may well make it harder for Russia to employ the kinds of information warfare that it used in 2016.  But they will not address the fundamental vulnerability which Russia successfully exploited, which is the increasing social and political fissures in society and the resulting erosion of social trust in the U.S. over the past decades.

As a solution, Rangappa exhorts us to shore up the American weaknesses Russia exploits with a rebirth and renewal of citizenship, community, and civic life:

A model to rebuild social capital in America—and strengthen social trust—can feel unsatisfying, since it is intangible, difficult to measure, and disperses responsibility on us, as citizens.  At the same time, however, it can be empowering, as it offers a way for Americans to take ownership of a large part of the solution.  Russia’s attack on our democracy is an invitation for us to examine our relationship with fellow citizens, and how technology has affected the way we engage with them online and in real life.  By reclaiming democratic values that transcend political differences, and leveraging the most effective vehicles we have to disseminate them (including social media!), the U.S. can generate an immunity to Russia’s destabilization efforts which will endure over the long term.

In the syllabus for one of her classes that is very much an extension of her essay, Professor Rangappa provides a road map for the way forward with a robust list of materials, including:

1. Orwell’s legendary 1984 (to help bolster our defenses against not only totalitarianism and groupthink but also Orwellian disinformation and the manipulation of language so endemic in its use by troublemakers both at home and abroad)
2. The singular de Tocqueville’s ever-relevant, ever-insightful, ever-enduring Democracy in America (to understand our unique historical strengths and weaknesses and how they have factored into our democracy)
3. Amu Chua’s Political Tribes, an account of American tribalism (a force that we must understand and fight against more effectively, as it is tearing our country apart)
4. Robert Putnam’s seminal Bowling Alone (to understand how important social capital and civic engagement are in creating and maintaining a strong society)
5. The documentary Active Measures (to properly understand the methods by which Putin is attacking and harming our democracy)
6. Schoolhouse Rock(the episodes on American government and history, to show how learning about civics can be fun and also appeal to young Americans)

Professor Rangappa’s cocktail of learning is a foundation for a national societal strategy:

1. Understand how anti-democratic forces work to distort reality and language, along with rewriting history, in a war on reality we have to win
2. Know ourselves from an objective perspective (the good, the bad, and the ugly)
3. Understand how corrosive our own tribalism in America is and how we can fight it even before taking into account foreign efforts to exploit it
4. Gain a newfound appreciation for social capital and civic engagement so that we can restructure society to prioritize these vital pillars of healthy democracy
5. Know our chief foreign enemy, Vladimir Putin, and his methods, as well as how and why he has been successful in damaging America
6. Remember how important it is to start with civics and understanding our history and system overall and at a young age so that we may revive our moribund civics curricula for all American students going forward

Ultimately, such a strategy and priority-resetting will help us revive and further realize our Founding Fathers’ vision for America.

Virtue, then, along with biodefense and information warfare, is also a national security issue.

If you are rolling your eyes a bit with the serious suggestion that “we as individuals must be better and do more,” know that this consideration of virtue was of primary concern to the Founding Fathers and many great men before and after them.  They might not have used the term “national security” the way we do and I just did, but it was still a primary national security issue for our Founders nonetheless.

Few have articulated this sentiment as well and with such authority, and perhaps none better, then James Madison himself—eventual fourth president and architect and overall author of the U.S. Constitution—when he was making the case to the public in 1788, in writing and anonymously, for the adoption of that Constitution in The Federalist, in “No. 55,” to be exact:

As there is a degree of depravity in mankind which requires a certain degree of circumspection and distrust, so there are other qualities in human nature which justify a certain portion of esteem and confidence.  Republican government presupposes the existence of these qualities in a higher degree than any other form.  Were the pictures which have been drawn by the political jealousy of some among us faithful likenesses of the human character, the inference would be, that there is not sufficient virtue among men for self-government; and that nothing less than the chains of despotism can restrain them from destroying and devouring one another.

In other words, “We the People” must be worthy enough as a people—enough of us individually so that it is true in a collective sense—or this whole democracy thing is not going to work out so well.

Yes, in the short term, we must act boldly at the highest levels of our government and international bodies to prepare for the next pandemic and our first major bioawarfare or bioterrorist attack.  But in the long-run, we must fix our ailing society which produced such an unconscionable, unforgivable response to the novel coronavirus in the first place.  And as ambitious as my Cabinet-level Department of Pandemic Preparedness and Response proposal will be demonstrated to be, it will be that second task that will be the far more challenging one.

Cassandra: Even then I told my people all the grief to come…

Aieeeee! —
the pain, the terror! the birth-pang of the seer 
who tells the truth — 
                                     it whirls me, oh, 
the storm comes again, the crashing chords!…

Leader[/Chorus]: Poor creature, you 
and the end you see so clearly. I pity you.

—Agamemnon, 1216-1344, by Aeschylus (458 BCE), Robert Fagles translation

Correction appended: Gen. Russel Honoré’s name was previously misspelled.

In the interest of full disclosure, Brian interned for Joe Biden from September-December, 2006. He is currently in no way professionally affiliated with the Biden 2020 campaign, nor is receiving any compensation from it nor the Democratic Party nor any related super-PACs, campaigns, or other political groups involved in the 2020 nominating contests and elections.

© 2020 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

This article is also available to be read as five separate articles:

• 1-A Brief, Non-Comprehensive Survey of Bioweapons, Biowarfare, and Bioterrorism History in Light of the Coronavirus Pandemic
• 2-America’s History of Failure in Unconventional and Asymmetric Warfare Is Instructive for Our War with the Coronavirus
• 3-Why the Coronavirus Pandemic and America’s Disastrous Response Will Inspire Future Use of Bioweapons
• 4-The Harsh Truths Coronavirus Has Exposed
• 5-Coronavirus and History, Russia and Italy, the War for Reality, and the Nexus of It All

Brian E. Frydenborg is an American freelance writer, academic, and consultant from the New York City area. You can follow and contact him on Twitter: @bfry1981.  He also just recently authored A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia.

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here and, of course, please share the hell out of this article!!

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse September 22, 2018

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter@bfry1981), September 11th-13th, 2018, and republished by Tuck Magazine September 24th; See my related Trumpism and Tribalism Run Amok in the Middle East for Small Wars Journal

Danielle Parhizkaran/USA Today Sports

AMMAN — As I write this while watching the memorial service at Ground Zero with mourners reading the names of those they and others lost seventeen years ago today, as we remember the horrors of September 11th, 2001, and their aftermath, more and more, it looks like 9/11 can be seen as a turning point, one in which the world went from becoming less tribal to becoming more tribal, and not at all in a good way.

Hell, even tennis has just exploded into tribalism. TENNIS!! A spat between a (THE) tennis superstar and a stickler-of-an umpire became just like everything else: tribes gearing up for war, trying to gain ground in their culture wars consumed by vitriol and hate. TENNIS is now Trump vs. his many enemies, the left vs. the right, Sunni vs. Shiite, black vs. white, Hillary supporters vs. Bernie supporters, men vs. women, Israel vs. Palestine…

How did it get to this?

*****

As the millennium celebrations approached, the world could celebrate an era of increasing international peace, cooperation, and prosperity not seen since the Pax Romana some roughly two thousand years earlier.

Flikr/Paul Mannix

The Cold War had finally ended, and the two most powerful countries in the world had engaged in a massive reduction of their military forces, including their nuclear arsenals, as the great rivalry between Cold War superpowers the United State and the Soviet Union had melted away to a new if rocky friendship between the U.S. and Russia even as the U.S. extended friendship and alliances to many of Russia’s former Soviet republics and satellite states.

Europe was becoming more and more united politically, economically, militarily, as well as more democratic. Longtime enemies Jordan and Israel had finally signed a peace treaty, and a difficult but important peace process between Israelis and Palestinians had begun under the Oslo Accords. Even the U.S. and Vietnam were beginning a new chapter of friendship. Bitter rivalries in Asia had given way to increasing regional economic cooperation, and after a century of hatred, Japan and South Korea had agreed to host the 2002 FIFA World Cup together. Democracy and freedom were spreading in Latin America and Africa too, where apartheid had finally ended in South Africa and other nations were making important strides away from dictatorship.

This era of optimistic globalization would come to a screeching halt as planes slammed into the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers on September 11th, 2001. 

*****

It took a tremendous amount of `both hatred and willpower to plot to plan and fly those planes into their targets on September 11th, 2001. I’d love to say that, overall, we Americans responded with love to overcome the hate. We did, if ever so briefly, but that quickly gave way even more intense partisan rancor, two grossly mismanaged wars, and profligate spending along with a resurgence of all the awful trends that continued and spiraled out of control into what we have now. 

America became incredibly divided well before the 2004 presidential election; while the numbers were not dramatically different from 2000, the level of rancor and acrimony was. And America had just invaded Iraq in 2003, under deceptive and misguided if at least partially well-intention pretenses, and mismanaged the occupation in such an incompetent way that it ripped open the ethnic and sectarian divides in Iraq in a way that would, over time, raise tensions between Sunnis and Shiites, Arabs and Kurds, and Sunnis and other minorities like Christians, and this throughout the Middle East.

The 2003 invasion of Iraq exacerbated, but by no means created, these divisions, and the damage would be considerable. For a brief window, the U.S. seemed like it would be able to shape events as it desired, but that dream faded away to reality as soon as an al-Qaeda truck bomb killed dozens and wounded far more at the UN headquarters in Baghdad, including its all-star chief diplomat, the incomparable Sergio Vieira de Mello, that August; the UN pulled out soon after and Iraq, under hapless U.S. misleadership, descended in hell.

Yet the damage was hardly America acting by itself: particularly Syria and Iran—nervous about what American success in Iraq would mean for their regimes—were happy to let terrorists, insurgents, militiamen, other people and/or weapons enter Iraq by the thousands, caring little for the death and violence these actors and equipment would inflict upon the Iraqi people as long as they were undermining American interests there. This only further exacerbated tensions and problems already festering due to American incompetence to such a degree that Iraqi Shiites settled on an Iraqi Shiite strongman—Nuri Kamal al-Maliki—to feel safe, whose oppression of Sunnis was the largest single factor in the degree to which ISIS would experience success in Iraq. 

In a true case of chickens coming home to roost, ISIS—an offshoot of the breakaway former al-Qaeda group in Iraq that killed de Mello—added to the brutality of the Syrian Civil War, both directly in its own barbaric acts of mass murder and mass destruction but also indirectly in dragging less extreme factions closer to its brutality level and giving the regime of Bashar al-Assad and later its Russian allies all the excuse they would need to employ their own barbaric tactics against any and all resistance, pointing to ISIS and making little-to-no distinction between ISIS and Syrians simply fighting for their freedom.  The Syrian Civil War was itself one of a number of failures of the Arab Spring that have turned people against each other rather than uniting them, was already a horror-show of bloody sectarianism bringing out the worst in people all-around by the time ISIS had marched to the outskirts of Baghdad in mid-2014. 

Israel’s right-wing leaders, from the late Ariel Sharon to Benjamin Netanyahu, likened their conflicts with the Palestinians and with Hezbollah incorrectly to George W. Bush’s “War on Terror” just as Putin did with the Chechens, and prosecuted these conflicts with a ferocity that only empowered extremists in Hamas and Hezbollah (who do their part to empower extremity in Israeli politics) and has helped make the prospect for peace all but impossible for now, destroying Oslo and the peace process. 

The same increasing sectarianism and tribalism has led to a cruel callousness with which the Saudi-led coalition has prosecuted the war in Yemen and has created one of the worst humanitarian disasters in a half-century.

Just to look at a few other major locations: India is increasingly a hotbed of religious violence, China is engaged in the mass-cultural and religious destruction of its Uighur Muslim minority in its worst oppression since Mao, a genocide against the Muslim-minority Rohingya is happening in Burma, the South China Sea is becoming an increasingly nationalistically confrontational arena, and ethnic and/or religious tensions are driving forces reigniting wars in central Africa, from the Central African Republic to the Democratic Republic of the Congo to South Sudan.

While Americans were focused on the 9/11 attacks and their aftermath, including two wars overseas, the Bush Administration and Republicans rammed through a disastrous series of regulatory and economic moves that more than helped set the stage for the 2008 global financial crises. The hardships caused, intensified, and/or perpetuated by the near-collapse of the global financial system created and/or facilitated a state where masses of citizens globally were experiencing regression in their well-being, fostering much of the instability, political division, violent conflict, and rage at the status quo mentioned above.

As people looked for easy targets to blame, economic setbacks gave way to even greater racial, ethnic, cultural, and religious resentment; too many non-whites blamed white people in general for their ills in an unproductive way, painting with a broad brush and alienating possible white allies while energizing angry whites, while, even more importantly, whites laughably and ignorantly looked at racial, ethnic, and religious minorities as the roots of all their frustrations. Racial unrest exploded across America over the past few years, and white identity politics, more so than the economy, have brought us Brexit and Trump, though obviously there are relationships between the two. At this point, tribal secessionism in Europe is rising, in Spain with Catalonia and in the UK with Scotland (both having enthusiastic Russian support).

In hindsight, Brexit in 2014 was an obvious herald of Trump’s triumph in 2016 (both dramatically and in determining ways aided materially and abetted by the Russians). By 2016, poor whites in Appalachia and elsewhere were told to check their privilege, while nonwhites moving into the suburbs and in other communities were told to go back to where they came from. The resulting election (with the help of a massive, concerted state-sponsored Russian effort), was the most racially polarizing since the Civil Rights era a half-century earlier, a “whitelash” (to quote Van Jones from election night) of white nationalism that revealed the depths of American tribalism and made American politics in many ways as banal as those of the former the Soviet Republic of Georgia and many other places consumed by ethnic division.

Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images

*****

Since Trump’s win, the world has only plunger deeper into tribal division. The U.S. presidency—the single largest public media organ in global politics—has gone virtually silent on human rights, tolerance, respect for other cultures, and appreciation of diversity, with the consequences far transcending the verbal arena. This is a dramatic swing considering that human rights have been a major theme of U.S. foreign policy (even with all its shortcomings) for most of America’s modern history regardless of which party was in the White House. Concurrently, the forces on the other side of those stances have only too eagerly filled the void, and often with the help of Putin’s Kremlin.

As I noted not long ago, small-minded tribalism was a major factor in the fall of the Western Roman Empire, and it is a major factor in the current unraveling of the West.

Regrettably, a tennis match is now—like everything else in the current cultural landscape—a frontline battle in a vicious global war of tribalism. This tremendous tribal tidal shift can be traced to 9/11, a tombstone not just for thousands of Americans and those who died in the ensuing misguided wars, but also for an era of humanity transcending petty differences. 9/11 is not just a time to mourn the dead, but what is to come, the petty creatures we have become, and the alternate world of lost opportunities: the what-might-have-beens if that glorious march forward—even with all its inconsistencies, bumps, and steps backwards—had continued without the slamming of planes into buildings and without the sad, counterproductive responses launched from what can be called, in hindsight, the ashes of hope.

Brian E. Frydenborg is an American freelance writer and consultant from the New York City area who has been based in Amman, Jordan, since early 2014. He holds an M.S. in Peace Operations and specializes in a wide range of interrelated topics, including international and U.S. policy/politics, security/conflict/(counter)terrorism, humanitarianism, development, social justice, and history. You can follow and contact him on Twitter: @bfry1981

See my related Trumpism and Tribalism Run Amok in the Middle East for Small Wars Journal

© 2018 Brian E. Frydenborg, all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here 

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

Published on LinkedIn Pulse April 13, 2018

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter@bfry1981) April 13th, 2018, a more in-depth version of this brief piece published by War Is Boring on April 11th, 2018, and both adapted from an article published April 8th, 2017

AFP-JIJI

Support Brian and his work by donating here

AMMAN — Almost exactly a year ago, I was working on a piece I had originally titled “Time to Put Up or Shut Up, Donald.” As I continued to write, though, reports that Trump was considering military strikes against Assad’s government for his horrific then-recent chemical weapons attack on civilians designed to terrorize his own people surfaced on Tuesday, April 4th, 2017; that ensuing Thursday, April 6th, it was time for your author here (finally) have some fun and go to a party, and by the time I got home, when I had already thought the odds of Trump eventually hitting Assad were greater than those of him not hitting him, the strikes had already been launched, necessitating something of a reworking of my article.

There was a lot to digest , and there still is now. With this latest chemical attack in Douma against civilians and its blatant timing (and in light of Trump’s recent announcement just days earlier that he was planning on withdrawing all U.S. forces from Syria a year later Assad seems to be deliberately testing, even daring Trump, as he had with Obama before him. Also like a year ago, Trump seems to very much be favoring a military strike or strikes as a response. There are few times when things so nearly completely repeat themselves like they are now, and my feelings on these issues remain the same.

*****

Can Trump (still) Succeed Where Obama Failed?

Full disclosure: I voted for Obama twice and enthusiastically but I would say the biggest mistake of his presidency (apart from his pitiful response in 2016 to Russian election interference, what I call the [First] Russo-American Cyberwar) was backing away from his “red line” on the use of chemical weapons after Syrian President Bashar al-Assad used them to barbaric effect against his own people back in the fall of 2013. At that time, Assad and his forces were reeling and U.S. military action targeting his forces, especially the Syrian Arab Air Force, would have been decisive in changing the trajectory of the Syrian Civil War, especially since a robust Western entry and enforcement of no-fly zones would have prevented Russia’s subsequent robust entry in the fall of 2015.

In the spring of 2017, the situation was quite different: Assad had obliterated many of the rebel strongholds, most notably (and most tragically) Aleppo, and ISIS, too, had been severely weakened, facing its final days in Mosul, Iraq, one of its two last major strongholds, and in the process of being encircled in its other stronghold in Raqqa, Syria, its “capital;” furthermore, not only did Assad’s government have the of support of the Shiite Lebanese militia Hezbollah and of Iran’s military on the ground (among other Shiite militias), but it also enjoyed the robust military support of Russia and its vaunted air force. And even though Assad’s military had been whittled to down a shell of its former self(even his Syrian Arab Air Force is running low on parts and serviceable craft and can ill afford aircraft losses), with his allies, he was in far stronger position then than he was when Obama backed away from striking Syrian forces in 2013, even if heavily dependent on these allies.

Now, a year later in the spring of 2018, all this is even more so the case: ISIS is long out of Mosul and was pushed out of Raqqa back in October; Assad’s Syrian Arab Air Force saw 20% of its serviceable aircraft destroyed by Trump’s strike from a year ago; most recently the rebel enclave in Eastern Ghouta has fallen; and Russia is still shamelessly lying and covering up for Assad even after this latest attack, is functioning as Assad’s air force, and even felt bold enough to attack U.S. forces in early February (albeit with Russian mercenaries under the control of a key Putin oligarch-ally, Yevgeniy Prigozhin); that attack ended up going disastrously for the Russians, “hundreds” of whom were killed.

And still, the most powerful military force on the planet—that of the United States, which in 2016 spent more on its military than Russia and the other seven largest military spenders in the world combined and over half of those are close U.S. allies while none are Russian allies—can easily make a huge impact, and let those who employ the use of chemical weapons against civilians, or support those who do, know that there will be a cost for such actions. When trump hit Assad’s airbase a year ago, it seems a warning shot had then been fired to that effect. 

But now, a year later, the worst chemical attack in Syria since then is directly challenging the abstention of major chemical weapons attacks brought about that warning shot.

Before backing away from striking Assad, Obama spoke in the Rose Garden on August 31st, 2013, asking a question:

Here’s my question for every member of Congress and every member of the global community: What message will we send if a dictator can gas hundreds of children to death in plain sight and pay no price? What’s the purpose of the international system that we’ve built if a prohibition on the use of chemical weapons that has been agreed to by the governments of 98 percent of the world’s people and approved overwhelmingly by the Congress of the United States is not enforced?

Make no mistake — this has implications beyond chemical warfare. If we won’t enforce accountability in the face of this heinous act, what does it say about our resolve to stand up to others who flout fundamental international rules? To governments who would choose to build nuclear arms? To terrorist who would spread biological weapons? To armies who carry out genocide?

We cannot raise our children in a world where we will not follow through on the things we say, the accords we sign, the values that define us.

His words ring just as true today.

Obama sadly, and rather pathetically, did not put serious action behind his eloquent words about why we needed to support an international system where the use of such weapons of mass destruction not tolerated. The Republicans later skewered Obama for backing away—even as most of them hypocritically criticized his proposed military action at the time (many even signing a formal letter stating he needed authorization from Congress to act) before he backed away from it, a decision Obama made in part because they would not support him; Trump himself tweeted at Obama not to attack Syrian forces back then.

Since then, Republicans have proceeded to criticize Obama for having a weak strategy even while offering precious few specifics that differed from Obama’s strategy, as did Trump, who, just as hypocritically as the others in his newly adopted Republican Party, also repeatedly asserted Obama’s weakness was responsible for the continuing horrors in Syria, and, as president, he has continued to assert this after this latest chemical attack.

I figured that Trump, ever the narcissist, values his public perception as much as anything, and after beating up on Obama’s weakness for years, and given a chance to show himself to be the more “decisive” and “macho” “man” in a situation that had no choice but to be compared to Obama’s waffling in the fall of 2013, would most certainly at least be tempted to reverse his pro-Russia and somewhat pro-Assad policy and to act to punish Assad where Obama declined to do so. As I watched him speak on the issue over the past few days, Trump even seemed genuinely moved by the horrific images of dying babies and other civilians coming out of Idlib.

And putting aside these considerations of personality or motivations here, there are very good reasons for Trump to have done what he did and to do it again.

*****

Why Trump Was Right and Would Be Right Again

The Situation in Syria, March 17th, 2017

Before Trump fired cruise missiles at a Syrian airfield, Assad and his Russian backers were clearly feeling they could do anything they want and get away with it and feared no U.S. intervention; impunity would be their modus operandi, there would be no political settlements, no “peace negotiations;” no, Assad and his backers were going to continue to systematically exterminate any whiff of opposition, city by city, town by town, corpse by corpse. Concessions? To rebels? To terrorists? To “terrorists?” One must simply ask: why would he need to comply with the demands of the international community? What pressures existed that would actually constrain Assad or extract any concessions, especially when Russia—one of the most powerful nations in the world and with the most centralized power structure at the top of any major world power (except, perhaps, China with Xi now a president-for-life)—would just lie and claim “terrorists,” not at the Syrian military, were to blame for whatever atrocity Assad (or Russia) had perpetrated, or that the atrocity in question had not happened at all, as it has for years? Does anyone think rhetorical flourishes from the West, Turkey, and Arab League members would change anything? When Russia at the time had vetoed seven different United Nations Security Council resolutions against the Assad regime, with Russia’s ground, naval, and air forces (along with Iran and Hezbollah and other Shiite militias) inside Syria energetically empowering Assad to operate knowing there would be no substantive consequences no matter what atrocity he committed—even if he killed hundreds of thousands of people with indiscriminate attacks and the deliberate targeting of civilians, even if he used outlawed chemical weapons of mass destruction to kill his own people—what on earth is left to compel Assad to even feel the need to negotiate, let alone stop his mass slaughter of civilians?

The sad answer in our real world as it exists today is clear: one thing, and one thing only…

force exerted by the United States of America. 

Especially with Russia operating in Syria supporting Assad, only the United States could lead any kind of military force to challenge the above status quo. Nothing else could give Assad pause or cause him to consider restraint. But the United States showed Assad that even with the Russian military there, his forces were not safe if President Trump, the U.S. Military’s Commander in Chief, decided to strike, which he did. And, with Russia being dramatically weaker than the U.S. (especially with the U.S. many allies), there is little Russia can do to stop the U.S. (but more on that another time).

In this situation confronting Trump last year, there were two options: do nothing serious and allow a regime that has no interest, inclination, or reason in its mind to negotiate or concede anything to continue to kill anyone it pleases and destroy anything it wants anytime it pleases while facing no serious consequences, or the United States could have hit back, sent a message, and forced Assad to bend to the will of the world by behaving less barbarically towards his own people or face serious consequences, from warning punitive strikes to major degradation of his armed forces and beyond.

This is the same binary choice facing Trump today.

And contrary to what you might hear, this can be good for mitigating the conflict overall. After all, as I wrote five years ago, the current dynamics are clear: with Assad waging war on the people of Syria, nothing will stop the flow of refugees that risks further destabilizing Syria’s neighbors that include multiple major U.S. allies—a flow that has helped spur an explosion of right-wing insanity in both Europe (where Russia is “weaponizing” the refugee crisis to damage the EU) and America, a right wing insanity that feeds the rise of radical Islamic extremism even as the war in Syria does the same—unless the war stops and/or safe zones are established, as nothing will convince the more than 5.5 million Syrians who have fled Syria (and that number only counts those registered by the UN: Jordan alone is estimated to have around 800,000 unregistered Syrians, compared with only some 659,000 registered ones; this doesn’t even get to the more than 6.1 million internally displaced people, or IDPs, inside Syria) to return home as long as an impudent Bashar al-Assad feels he can kill at whim all while the world makes noise but ultimately does little more than shrugs its shoulders in response. These dynamics, too, also feed the growth in violent Islamic extremism worldwide and right-wing extremism in the West in a vicious feedback loop.

I hear and read too many “experts” present a false Sophie’s choice: either we let Assad win or ISIS wins/the war doesn’t end. Well, in case you’re missing it, ISIS has had its “caliphate” virtually destroyed—thanks to a slow but steady strategy of Obama’s that was clearly coming to penultimate fruition even before Trump was sworn in (a fact that won’t stop Trump from taking credit for it)—and history shows that non-intervention in brutal wars, especially involving mass killings (e.g., Cambodia and Rwanda) can allow the wars and killing to continue unabated for a long time and can lead to genocide, while well-executed intervention (e.g., WWII, Bosnia, and Kosovo) stops or at least partially halts and reduces mass killing. 

Now, of course, there is a possibility that the intervention will fail or make things worse—a possibility exaggerated by the recent memory of Iraq, more of an aberration of Western intervention in its relative mass incompetence than the post-Cold War norm—but any attempt to solve any problem in life risks making that problem worse, so that possibility is, by itself, an illogical reason to not intervene, a total cop-out, and a path to inhuman nihilism.

As one man—Kassem Eid—who survived the 2013 Ghouta chemical attack that nearly prompted Obama to attack Assad noted a year ago under the same circumstances:

If you really care about refugees, if you really care about helping us, please, help us stay in our country… we don’t want to become refugees, we want to stay in our country, help us establish safe zones…please take out Assad’s air forces so they won’t be able to commit more atrocities.

The United States and its allies are more than capable of doing just that, and if Trump’s action is not a one-off—and let’s be honest, this ego-driven narcissist with authoritarian, even fascistic tendencies has had his first real exercise of power and he will love it, not in the least because he has earned global praise for it (and only it),—the likelihood is more than not that this is all going to be mainly handled by professionals in the U.S. military, and Secretary of Defense James Mattis is no Donald Rumsfeld. As detestable and anti-refugee as Trump is, because of his decision, and especially if he follows through now with an even stronger response than that of last year, there could be a greater chance than at any time since 2013 for the much-needed establishment of safe-zones protected by the international community.

Trump striking Assad again and setting a clear line on the medium-to-large scale use of chemical weapons will also certainly make Iran question the cost of its support of Assad along with helping to limit the expansion of Hezbollah’s power, though Israel is already consistently acting on that front. 

Also, as I pointed out also back in 2013, there is still little risk to the U.S. and a high-probability of success in striking Assad’s air power, military bases, or heavy weapons, which are difficult or impossible to hide. Hezbollah, Assad, and ISIS have enough on their hands to devote much to any “response” to the U.S.

Finally—and again, I will repeat I thought Obama’s inaction (and the Republican-led Congress’s vocal lack of support) were major mistakes in 2013—there is an important difference between now and 2013. Back then, as I noted above, Assad’s forces were being pushed back and U.S. intervention may have led to the toppling of his government, and this not long after the disillusionment of the experience of Libya’s post-NATO-intervention problems (although I still would say that the intervention was successful in saving many lives and preventing a civil war from being prolonged, but more on that another time); no other major power had intervened in Syria and thus owned the conflict, to speak, and that was another solid argument Obama could have put out on the side of non-intervention, even if non-intervention was still the weaker overall argument. Today, Russia is heavily involved in Syria, far more than the U.S., and it is hard to imagine Putin simply pulling out and letting the situation devolve into chaos, a result that would be blamed in large part on Russia and that would hurt Putin’s prestige and his own credibility when it comes to Russia intervening anywhere. With another great power invested besides (and more so than) America, unlike in 2013, the idea that the toppling of Assad would result in anarchy and a terrorist safe haven is less of a likelihood, since now two great powers will be heavily invested in the outcome if the U.S. becomes more heavily involved and actions lead to Assad’s ouster (unlikely anytime soon) or weakening (more likely). If the U.S. wipes out the Syrian Arab Air Force, that Russia will have to do all the heavily (air)lifting for Assad, dramatically increasing the costs of Russian support and also further exposing Russian troops to risk. So even just striking Assad will also make Putin pay.

If you let your justifiable hatred of Trump get in the way of your support of even someone like him doing more than anyone has yet to help the long-term situation of Syrian refugees and Syrians still in Syria—if you refuse to understand that these strikes may this time be the first steps in creating paths for Syrians to safely return to Syrian soil and even if they aren’t will still make it harder for Assad to engage in mass killing—you care more about your personal feelings and personal politics than actually helping refugees and saving lives at worse, or are incredibly myopic at best.

Don’t get me wrong: there are things about this that worry me, and I will write more on that another time. But removing the issues of domestic U.S politics, the Russia investigation, and possible major conflicts with Iran and North Korea, as far as Syria is concerned, hitting Assad’s forces in response to this chemical attack and other outrages is easily the best, and right, thing to do.

In other words, yes, oppose trump in general, but when he does good, as rare as that it, take it as a gift.

*****

The U.S. Can Still Be a Force for Good in Syria

When it comes to Syria, the most important things are helping save as many lives as possible and allowing ways for refugees to return home free from of persecution. And as someone who truly hates Trump and sees him as the threat to democracy and the world order that he is, it is here that as a student of policy and a person who cares about saving lives and preserving international norms that it is easy for me to support this action enthusiastically, despite my misgivings for the man calling the shots behind it. I felt this way a year ago, and I feel this way now.

As with any operation, though, expectations need to be reasonable.

Even if Trump just engages in another one-off strike, the deterrent effects will save lives. But sustained enforcement of red-lines designed to protect civilians would obviously be better. But the idea that modest U.S. intervention would somehow change the course of the war now is absurd. But while Assad and Russia continue to mop up any resistance, how brutal they are to the civilian populations is something the U.S. can and should constrain, and by force if necessary; while it’s almost impossible to envision a rebel victory, the U.S. can put an extremely high price on acts of mass brutality and mass murder against civilians and of defying international norms on the use of weapons of mass destruction, chemical or otherwise. Assad may control most of Syria again soon, but how many Syrians are dead vs. alive is something the U.S. can still affect in meaningful ways if it is willing to act in moments like this. And even now, U.S. and allied air forces can, even in this late stage of the war, impose and safe zones in parts of Syria that will make it impossible for Assad and the Russians to use their very effective and very efficient air forces and heavy weapons in these areas without themselves suffering serious casualties. This will greatly increase the costs for both Assad and Putin and their allied forces and begin to make other options, including negotiations, more attractive and also safer for them. With more constraints on air support and the use of heavy weapons, the qualitative edge pro-Assad forces have over the rebels will shrink, as will their ability to efficiently kill civilians. This could create a more humane ending to one of the most brutal wars in recent memory, for, as this recent chemical attack is showing, Assad and the Russians are showing little restraint as their successes mount. Apart from saving lives, a less brutal end to the war will also sow the seeds of a more stable peace.

As New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote in when Obama was wrestling with the same issues, “For all the risks of hypocrisy and ineffectiveness, it’s better to stand up inconsistently to some atrocities than to acquiesce consistently in them all.” Yes, mass murder by Assad’s and Putin’s forces have continued since Trump’s first strike last year, but medium-to-larger scale nerve gas attacks ceased for a year and the mass murder continued in other ways, that hardly means that future strikes won’t constrain the violence and give these mass murderers pause. Even just some pausing could the difference between life and death for many helpless Syrian civilians.

See related article by same author: Grading Obama’s Middle East Strategy II: Syria’s Civil War

© 2018 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

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Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse April 8, 2017

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter@bfry1981) April 8th, 2017

Mohamed Al-Bakour/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

AMMAN — I had originally titled this piece “Time to Put Up or Shut Up, Donald.” As I continued to write, though, reports that Trump was considering military strikes against Assad’s government for his horrific recent chemical weapons attack on civilians designed to terrorize his own people surfaced on Tuesday, April 4th; that ensuing Thursday, April 6th, it was time for your author here to (finally) have some fun and go to a party, and by the time I got home, when I had already thought the odds of Trump eventually hitting Assad were greater than those of him not hitting him, the strikes had already been launched, necessitating something of a reworking of my article.

There is a lot to digest here.

*****

Can Trump Succeed Where Obama Failed?

Full disclosure: I voted for Obama twice and enthusiastically but I would say the biggest mistake of his presidency was backing away from his “red line” on the use of chemical weapons after Syrian President Bashar al-Assad used them to barbaric effect against his own people back in the fall of 2013. At that time, Assad and his forces were reeling and U.S. military action targeting his forces, especially the Syrian Arab Air Force, would have been decisive in changing the trajectory of the Syrian Civil War, especially since a robust Western entry and enforcement of no-fly zones would have prevented Russia’s subsequent robust entry in the fall of 2015.

Now, in the spring of 2017, the situation is quite different: Assad has obliterated many of the rebel strongholds, most notably (and most tragically) Aleppo, and ISIS, too, has been severely weakened, facing its final days in Mosul, Iraq, one of its two last major strongholds, and in the process of being encircled in its other stronghold in Raqqa, Syria, its “capital;” furthermore, not only does Assad’s government have the active of support of the Shiite Lebanese militia Hezbollah and of Iran’s military on the ground (among other Shiite militias), but it also enjoys the robust military support of Russia and its vaunted air force. And even though Assad’s military has been whittled to down a shell of its former self(even his Syrian Arab Air Force is running low on parts and serviceable craft and can ill afford aircraft losses), with his allies, he is in far stronger position now than he was when Obama backed away from striking Syrian forces in 2013, even if heavily dependent on these allies.

And still, the most powerful military force on the planet—that of the United States, which in 2015 spent more on its military than Russia and the other six largest military spenders in the world combined—can easily make a huge impact, and let those who employ the use of chemical weapons against civilians, or support those who do, know that there will be a costfor such actions. And it seems a warning shot has now been fired to that effect.

Before backing away from striking Assad, Obama spoke in the Rose Garden  on August 31st, 2013, asking a question:

Here’s my question for every member of Congress and every member of the global community: What message will we send if a dictator can gas hundreds of children to death in plain sight and pay no price? What’s the purpose of the international system that we’ve built if a prohibition on the use of chemical weapons that has been agreed to by the governments of 98 percent of the world’s people and approved overwhelmingly by the Congress of the United States is not enforced?

Make no mistake — this has implications beyond chemical warfare. If we won’t enforce accountability in the face of this heinous act, what does it say about our resolve to stand up to others who flout fundamental international rules? To governments who would choose to build nuclear arms? To terrorist who would spread biological weapons? To armies who carry out genocide?

We cannot raise our children in a world where we will not follow through on the things we say, the accords we sign, the values that define us.

His words ring just as true today.

Obama sadly, and rather pathetically, did not put serious action behind his eloquent words about why we needed to support an international system where the use of such weapons of mass destruction as well as mass killing were not tolerated. The Republicans later skewered Obama for backing away—even as most of them hypocritically criticized his proposed military action at the time (many even signing a formal letter stating he needed authorization from Congress to act) before he backed away from it, a decision Obama made in part because they would not support him; Trump himself tweeted at Obama not to attack Syrian forces back then.

Since then, Republicans proceeded to criticize Obama for having a weak strategy even while offering precious few specifics that differed from Obama’s strategy, as did Trump, who, just as hypocritically as the others in his newly adopted Republican Party, also repeatedly asserted Obama’s weakness was responsible for the horrors in Syria up through his recent April 4th press conference with King Abdullah of Jordan that took place just hours after the recent Syrian government chemical attack in the Idlib area of Syria.

I figured that Trump, ever the narcissist, values his public perception as much as anything, and after beating up on Obama’s weakness for years, and given a chance to show himself to be the more “decisive” and “macho” “man” in a situation that had no choice but to be compared to Obama’s waffling in the fall of 2013 , would most certainly at least be tempted to reverse his pro-Russia and somewhat pro-Assad policy and to act to punish Assad where Obama declined to do so. As I watched him speak on the issue over the past few days, Trump even seemed genuinely moved by the horrific images of dying babies and other civilians coming out of Idlib.

And putting aside these considerations of personality here, there are very good reasons for Trump to have done what he did.

*****

Why Trump Was Right

Before Trump fired cruise missiles at a Syrian airfield, Assad and his Russian backers were clearly feeling they could do anything they want and get away with it and feared no U.S. intervention; impunity would be their modus operandi, there would be no political settlements, no “peace negotiations;” no, Assad and his backers were going to continue to systematically exterminate any whiff of opposition, city by city, town by town, corpse by corpse. Concessions? To rebels? To terrorists? To “terrorists?” One must simply ask: why would he need to comply with the demands of the international community? What pressures existed that would actually constrain Assad or extract any concessions, especially when Russia—one of the most powerful nations in the world and with the most centralized power structure at the top of any major world power—would just lie and claim “terrorists,” not at the Syrian military, were to blame for whatever atrocity Assad (or Russia) had perpetrated, or that the atrocity in question had not happened at all, as it has for years? Does anyone think rhetorical flourishes from the West, Turkey, and Arab League members would change anything? When Russia has vetoed seven different United Nations Security Council resolutions against the Assad regime, with Russia’s ground, naval, and air forces (along with Iran and Hezbollah and other Shiite militias) inside Syria energetically empowering Assad to operate knowing there would be no substantive consequences no matter what atrocity he committed—even if he killed hundreds of thousands of people with indiscriminate attacks and the deliberate targeting of civilians, even if used outlawed chemical weapons to kill his own people—what on earth is left to compel Assad to even feel the need to negotiate, let alone stop his mass slaughter of civilians?

The sad answer in our real world as it exists today is clear: one thing, and one thing only…

Military force exerted by the United States of America. 

Especially with Russia operating in Syria supporting Assad, only the United States could lead any kind of military force to challenge the above status quo. Nothing else could give Assad pause or cause him to consider restraint. But the United States showed Assad that even with the Russian military there, his forces were not safe if President Trump, the U.S. Military’s Commander in Chief, decided to strike at him, which he did. And for all of Russia’s tough talk, its military and air force are far inferior in quality and numbers to their American counterparts, so the idea that Russia would risk a serious military confrontation with the United States over Syria is ludicrous because it would only result in devastating defeat at the hands of the United States with no chance of saving face and only a high cost as a result, much worse than any cost that could be inflicted on the U.S. After all, Putin is not stupid enough to engage in a nuclear war that would destroy both nations and likely the world over the likes of Bashar al-Assad. Thus, what was also demonstrated for the world to see how little Russian protection actually meant for Assad in the face of U.S. military might.

In this situation, there were two options: do nothing serious and allow a regime that has no interest, inclination, or reason in its mind to negotiate or concede anything to continue to kill anyone it pleases and destroy anything it wants anytime it pleases while facing no consequences, or the United States can hit back, send a message, and force Assad to bend to the will of the world by behaving less barbarically towards his own people or face serious consequences, from warning punitive strikes to major degradation of his armed forces to exile and/or the fall of his government.

And contrary to what you might hear, this can be good for mitigating the conflict overall. After all, as I wrote three years ago, the current dynamics are clear: with Assad and ISIS both waging war on the people of Syria, nothing will stop the flow of refugees that risk destabilizing Syria’s neighbors that include multiple major U.S. allies—a flow that has helped spur an explosion of right-wing insanity in both Europe (where Russia is “weaponizing” the refugee crisis to damage the EU) and America, a right wing insanity that feeds the rise of radical Islamic extremism even as the war in Syria does the same—unless the war stops and/or safe zones are established, as nothing will convince the more than five million Syrians who have fled Syria (and that number only counts those registered by the UN: Jordan alone is estimated to have around 800,000 unregistered Syrians, compared with only 633,000 registered ones; this doesn’t even get to the more than 6.3 million internally displaced people, or IDPs, inside Syria) to return home as long as an impudent Bashar al-Assad feels he can kill at whim and will while the world makes noise but ultimately shrugs its shoulders. These dynamics also feed the growth in violent Islamic extremism in a vicious feedback loop.

I hear and read too many “experts” present a false Sophie’s choice: either we let Assad win or ISIS wins/the war doesn’t end. Well, in case you’re missing it, ISIS is on the verge of having its “caliphate” destroyed—thanks to a slow but steady strategy of Obama’s that was clearly coming to penultimate fruition even before Trump was sworn in (a fact that won’t stop Trump from taking credit for it)—and history shows that non-intervention in brutal wars involving mass killings (e.g., Cambodia and Rwanda) can allow killing to continue unabated for a long time and can lead to genocide, while well-executed intervention (e.g., WWII, Bosnia, and Kosovo) stops or at least partially halts mass killing. 

Now, of course, there is a possibility that the intervention will fail or make things worse—a possibility exaggerated by the recent memory of Iraq, more of an aberration of Western intervention in its relative mass incompetence than the post-Cold War norm—but any attempt to solve any problem in life risks making that problem worse, so that possibility is, by itself, an illogical reason to not intervene, a total cop-out, and a path to inhuman nihilism.

As one man—Kassem Eid—who survived the 2013 Ghouta chemical attack that nearly prompted Obama to attack Assad noted yesterday:

If you really care about refugees, if you really care about helping us, please, help us stay in our country… we don’t want to become refugees, we want to stay in our country, help us establish safe zones…please take out Assad’s air forces so they won’t be able to commit more atrocities.

The United States and its allies are more than capable of doing just that, and if Trump’s action is not a one-off—and let’s be honest, this ego-driven narcissist with authoritarian, even fascistic tendencies has had his first real exercise of power and he will love it, not in the least because he has earned global praise for it (and only it), so it very likely will not be a one-off—the likelihood is more than not that this is all going to be mainly handled by professionals in the U.S. military, and Secretary of Defense James Mattis is no Donald Rumsfeld. As detestable and anti-refugee as Trump is, because of his decision, there is now a greater chance than at any time since 2013 for the much-needed establishment of safe-zones protected by the international community.

It will also teach Russia that its recent run giving the West the finger has not empowered it as much as it thinks actually and makes Russia even weaker, with Russia unable to prevent American intervention in Syria even with its military there and seeing its investment in expanding its power there destroyed, exposing its troops to risk while supporting a WMD-using thug and making it even more so one of the most hated countries in the world and especially hated by a Sunni Muslim population (most of Alawite/Shiite Assad’s victims are Sunni Muslims) with a tiny fringe more susceptible to violent radicalization than any other group at present, keeping in mind that Russia has an oppressed Sunni Muslim population that has produced a notable number of anti-Russian terrorists and terrorist incidents since Russia’s conflicts in the Russian republic of Chechnya, the Caucasus overall, and the country of Afghanistan before that). As I wrote before, Russia intervened from a position of desperation and weakness, and Russia’s weak hand has only improved marginally for all its efforts but has also saddled it with more responsibility.

Trump’s strike will certainly make Iran question the cost of its support of Assad along with helping to limit the expansion of Hezbollah’s power.

Also, as was I pointed out also back in 2013, there is still little risk to the U.S. and a high-probability of success in striking Assad’s air power, military bases, or heavy weapons, which are difficult or impossible to hide. Hezbollah, Assad, and ISIS have enough on their hands to devote much to any “response” to the U.S.

Finally—and again, I will repeat I thought Obama’s inaction (and the Republican-led Congress’s vocal lack of support) were a mistake in 2013—there is an important difference between now and 2013. Back then, as I noted above, Assad’s forces were being pushed back and U.S. intervention may have led to the toppling of his government, and this not long after the disillusionment of the experience of Libya’s post-NATO-intervention problems (although I still would say that the intervention was successful in saving many lives preventing a civil war from being prolonged, but more on that another time); no other major power had intervened in Syria and thus owned the conflict, to speak, and that was another solid argument Obama could have put out on the side of non-intervention, even if non-intervention was still the weaker overall argument. Today, Russia is heavily involved in Syria, far more than the U.S., and it is hard to imagine Putin simply pulling out and letting the situation devolve into chaos, a result that would be blamed in large part on Russia and that would hurt Putin’s prestige and his own credibility when it comes to Russia intervening anywhere. With another great power invested besides America, unlike in 2013, the idea that the toppling of Assad would result in anarchy and a terrorist safe haven is less of a likelihood, since now two great powers will be heavily invested in the outcome if the U.S. becomes more heavily involved and actions lead to Assad’s ouster or weakening.

If you let your justifiable hatred of Trump get in the way of your support of even someone like him doing more than anyone has yet to help the long-term situation of Syrian refugees—if you refuse to understand that these strikes may be the first step in creating paths for Syrians to safely return to Syrian soil—you care more about your personal feelings and personal politics than actually helping refugees at worse, or are incredibly myopic at best.

*****

Causes For Concern

Don’t get me wrong: there are things about this that worry me. 

I respect the U.S. military and Mattis and have faith in both of them, and it’s virtually impossible for a president to micromanage a major U.S. military operation without massive influence from his secretary of defense, and as awful as Trump is, at least in a situation like Syria today, I’d be more worried about a Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld combination than a Trump-Pence-Mattis combination (though unquestionably Bush is better individually than Trump), and I think Mattis will impress Trump with his competence as any operations unfold and will gain more influence in this way. 

Having said that, I’m also scared about a Trump that gets a taste of military success, and am especially terrified with a North Korea now acting up when military aggression as a U.S. response on the Korean Peninsula would initiate a bloodbath that would make Bush’s Iraq invasion look mild in comparison, and especially so if Trump feels military adventurism is a preferred course when he is having a miserable time in domestic politics, which could lead to who knows what down the road.

I also worry that Trump being seen as the savior of Syrian refugees would make people forget about how awful his refugee and immigration policies are. I’m further worried that this will make people lose interest in his Russian scandals and make the Republican Party feel it will have cover again to obstruct and distract from the investigation after such actions (see the drama of Devin Nunes) had cost them. And I’m worried that this action may partly legitimize Trump and his dangerous program when, apart from this action, he and his program are not worthy of legitimization, only opposition and resistance.

So I will continue to vigorously oppose Trump and his agenda overall. But because I care passionately about human rights, stopping mass killing and genocide, and seeking a long-term situation for refugees and the Syrian Civil War, I will support his efforts to to go against Assad.

Political Considerations

But the move made a tremendous amount of sense for Trump and his administration for political reasons, and the chance Assad gave him to act was also something of a political gift from heaven.

For one thing, Trump has had a miserable first few months on the domestic front, without a single major accomplishment he could take credit for thus far and nearing the end of his 100 days, with self-inflicted wound after self-inflicted wound resulting in likely the worst first 100 days of any president.

In other words, Trump might be looking at no chance of a major accomplishment whatsoever during his first 100 days; a domestic accomplishment still seems a remote possibility, leaving only the realm of something dramatic in foreign policy, which before Assad’s chemical attack, and during a week in which his team had signaled acceptance of Assad’s rule over Syria, there had seemed few openings of this type either. Acting against Assad would credibly give Trump a big “win” at a time he desperately needs one and might even be his only chance for one.

Speaking of desperate, Trump’s approval-rating average had dipped below 40%, a historic low for so early in a presidency; this opportunity was one of the only ways on the horizon for Trump to be able to bring his poll numbers up anytime soon.

He was also about to host Chinese President Xi Jinping at a time when his administration was a disgrace and after months of bashing China; Trump’s strike immediately allowed him to move from a position of humiliation to one where he could project power while hosting Xi, who expressed private empathy for Trump ordering the strikes even as China did not offer public support. It will be interesting to consider what effect if any this will have on North Korea and on America’s efforts to enlist Chinese aid in dealing with North Korea.

And, of course, the elephant in the room for the entirety of Trump’s presidency so far has been the Trump Campaign and Trump Administration’s deeply disturbing ties to Russia, Putin, Russian money, and Russian organized crime, including Russia’s obvious efforts to help Trump defeat Clinton in the (First) Russo-American Cyberwar. Striking the Assad regime, Russia’s only true in-power ally outside of the states of the former Soviet Union, while Russia’s forces are actively engaged in supporting Assad has provided Trump with an excellent opportunity to take some of the heat off of him and his people as well as to demonstrate he is not beholden to or being controlled by the Russians amid hardly-purely-speculative accusations and suspicions be might be. In other words, Trump could go on offense in his weakest area, deflecting attention away from his biggest scandal—and possibly the biggest scandal in American history—and acting in a way that could reassure some of his less strident critics and give his supporters some much needed-assistance and cover to be able to, in turn, provide cover for him (though, substantively, nothing he has done here does anything to address the possible realities of past issues with ties to Russia, but perception is very powerful in politics and this move certainly affects perception in Trump’s favor).

In other worse, Trump personally had so much to gain and so little to lose with competently executed, limited strikes at this stage. 

In addition, at least some of Trump’s people must realize that the Democratic Party is still far less extreme that the Republican Party; unlike the Democrats, who said no to a takeover by the Bernie Sanders wing, the Republican Party has been hijacked by extremists for years, and, as I have noted, Democrats have been far more bi-partisan in their support of presidential foreign policy and national security than Republicans, so there was a good chance many Democrats would support this move in addition to Republicans and it seems that this is the case thus far.

Thus, politically, it was the best move Trump could have made with no other good options in sight. In some ways, it could even be called a no-brainer. If I were one of Trump’s political advisors, I would definitely have recommended this action.

*****

Apart from the political considerations, the far more important considerations involve the actual policy and substantive non-domestic-political considerations and the human lives affected by this strike. And as someone who truly hates Trump and sees him as the threat to democracy and the world order that he is, it is here that as a student of policy and a person who cares about saving lives and preserving international norms that it is easy for me to support this action enthusiastically, despite my misgivings for the man calling the shots behind it.

© 2017 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, no republication without permission, attributed quotations welcome

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Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse January 27, 2017

By Brian E. Frydenborg (Twitter: @bfry1981) January 27th, 2017; original interview conducted December 24th-26th, 2017; here is the English version of the interview published by ISNA on January 24th, and here is the Farsi (Persian) version

Carolyn Kaster/AP

Iranian Student News Agency (interviewer: Atefeh Moradi): The US election has passed, but we can truly see the polarized atmosphere in American society; how do you anticipate the political and social situation after 20 Jan.?

Brian Frydenborg: To be honest, it will be pretty awful. 53.9% of voters chose a candidate other than Trump, including 48.2% for Secretary Clinton, to Trump’s 46.1% (f this seems strange, just look up Electoral College on the Internet, and you will see that American elections are based on voting majorities divided into specific regions, not an absolute national majority). Yet Trump and his party will control the White House and both houses of Congress (with a large majority in the House and a small majority in the Senate), as well as the federal judiciary once Trump starts making judicial appointments and getting them confirmed, including filling that all-important vacant Supreme Court seat. For at least the next two years and likely even a longer period, this means almost 54% of Americans who voted will have no real power to check President Trump and his Republican Party from enacting an agenda they very forcefully do not support.

The one real exception to this is the filibuster, a Senate rule that, on most issues, allows the minority to prevent passage of something that cannot get at least 60 of 100 senators to support it; however, each new Congress can make its own rules, and Republicans will have the power to get rid of the filibuster if they choose to do so, which would become increasingly likely if Democrats use it block Trump’s and the Republicans’ agenda. If this happens, the Democrats lose their one way to check Trump independent of any help from Republicans, and, thus, will be powerless if Republicans stay united. Yes, in some ways, the Republican Party has not been this divided since the 1960s, but if one looks closer, this is not the case: while conservative public intellectuals and publications, many former Republicans officials (including both living former Republican presidents), and numbers of important major Republican political donors and fundraisers either privately or publicly oppose Trump, this is a tiny elite within the scope of the party as a whole; only a handful of senators and a small portion of Republican representatives in Congress consistently and publicly opposed Trump; nearly the entire Republican membership of Congress either supported Trump or dared not opposed him, and with the megaphone of the presidency on top of his Twitter-following of nearly 18 million people, Trump will be seeking to loudly intimidate any opposition, whether within his own party or not, and those within his own party will be highly vulnerable to this pressure as Trump can easily use it to rouse his followers. The political stalemate of the last six years will end as one party, led by Trump more than anyone else, will control the highest levels of the entire federal government.

What this means is that the nearly-54% will certainly see many of their hopes dashed and their fears realized, in particular women and minorities like African-Americans, Latinos, Muslims, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans who have been subject to abuse of power by the private sector and the government at the local, state, and federal level. A Trump Administration seems poised to either stop actively protecting these groups from abuses with any vigor at the least, or to actively undermine some of the protections and gains they have enjoyed in civil rights that have been enacted in recent years. Either way, racial, ethnic, and religious tensions that have been simmering and occasionally exploding into riots and violent attacks over the past few years in America are likely to get dramatically worse under Trump and serious civil unrest is a real possibility; this will especially be the case if Trump keeps acting the way he has been, which is to say, in ways that do nothing to assure groups fearful of a Trump presidency that they will be respected and have their needs and concerns addressed seriously.

ISNA:Some analysts believe Trump campaign’s rhetoric is not the cornerstone of his policies, what would be your stance toward this?

BF: I would call this out as wishful thinking. While Trump’s stated positions have shifted so many times it’s been easy to lose count, his rhetoric and his style have stayed fairly consistent, and the overall content of his rhetoric makes it clear that many of his harsher policies are going to be pursued with vigor; any doubt about this should have been erased by his cabinet picks announced thus far. Even if he ends up enacting a milder form of some of what he has discussed, such policies will still be game-changers and move the country sharply to the right policy-wise. But as a practical matter, his supporters—and, within the Republican Party’s group of elected officials, a strong core of the Republican House members—will insist that he carries out his promises, and Trump, ever so needful of admiration and validation, won’t want to disappoint his biggest fans. So his constituents and counterparts in Congress will make it hard for him to backtrack, even if he wants to, which on most issues he probably does not. 

ISNA: In regard with Trump’s cabinet nominees, can you anticipate the upcoming Washington policies?

BF: The best sign that Trump might move into a “governing mode” and power down his “campaign mode” would have been putting moderate people who could unite the country into key positions of power, most notably selecting either Mitt Romney or David Petraeus as Secretary of State. By picking big-oil CEO Rex Tillerson (a Putin ally) as Secretary of State, but also along with virtually all of his other choices, Trump made it clear he has no intention of generally pursuing a more moderate course. Instead, he has assembled the most extreme and most right-wing cabinet and White House in American presidential history. A simple look at his choices and their records make this beyond dispute, so there should be no confusion as to what to expect from them. In several agencies—the Department of Energy, the Department of Education, the Department of Labor, and the Environmental Protection Agency—Trump even appointed people who don’t believe in the agencies core missions or are downright hostile to them. Others, like Dr. Ben Carson for the Department of Housing and Urban Development and Nikki Haley for Ambassador to the United Nations, are supremely unqualified; still others like Trump’s National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and Ambassador to Israel David Friedman are outright extremists. And those who will be running the economy hail from the billionaire class. So those who are saying “Let’s wait and see…” are deluding themselves if they mean in any way to imply that a moderate course is a possibility and that moderates and liberals should not jump to conclusions: Trump’s behavior, actions, and selections are sending a clear message that would be foolish not to acknowledge.

ISNA: The US nuclear suitcase is in Trump’s hands now, do you think there should be any doubt about it?

BF: Let’s put it this way: should we think Trump would use nuclear weapons for fun or just on a whim? No. But the man’s character and temperament are so vastly different from every single president before him, and unsuited to the responsibility of the decision to use or not use nuclear weapons, that if a crisis with a major power like China erupted, I would be worried to have Trump as a Commander in Chief. If one recalls the Cuban Missile Crisis, WWIII and nuclear war were avoided because the cooler heads of both Kennedy and Khrushchev prevailed; the only way the phrase “cooler head” and the word “Trump” can fit into the same sentence is with satire. So if a truly grave situation did emerge, yes, we should be worried that Trump would be more likely to both threaten and use nuclear weapons than any previous American president in a similar situation. As it is, Trump is already calling for America to expand its nuclear arsenal, and the last thing that is good for the world now is a new nuclear arms race.  

This, in particular, concerns Iran, and Iran is in a tough position. Should Iran resume uranium enrichment because Trump follows through on his pledge to end the nuclear agreement from the U.S. side between the great powers and Iran, this would likely cause two things to occur: 1.) an attempt by Saudi Arabia to develop a nuclear program of its own, and perhaps Turkey, maybe even others, and 2.) an Israeli strike against Iranian nuclear facilities that would likely be supported or joined by a Trump Administration, sparking a wider war in the Middle East, likely between the U.S. and Sunni-led powers on one side and Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon in one form or another on the other. Yemen and Bahrain could easily become battlegrounds, and there is reason to consider as a serious possibility Russia joining or at least supporting the Shiite side, as Russia now already has something of an alliance with Iran, Hezbollah, and the Syrian Government through Syria’s Civil War.

ISNA: Trump repeatedly said that he is not for JCPOA [the Iran nuclear deal], although EU senior officials say it is beyond Trump’s authority to make any changes to this agreement; what would be your explanation on this issue?

BF: Trump can definitely end U.S. participation in the agreement, and can get Congress reapply the sanctions that were removed as part of it (these are separate from the current sanctions regarding military and terrorism issues). Would it be fair if Trump broke the agreement with Iran? No. Would it be understandable, even justified, for Iran to resume uranium enrichment under those circumstances? Of course. Yet sometimes, what you have the right and ability to do isn’t always the right choice, and the question Iran’s leaders will have to really ask themselves is this: is it really in Iranian interests to do so? Because if it does, the possibility of an Israeli strike—however unjustified or justified, leaving that question out it—supported or even joined by the U.S. becomes highly likely, and that is a situation that will be no good for Iran and Shiites all around the Middle East, especially those who are living under oppressive Sunni governments, or for the Middle East in general, not good at all. It will result in large losses of life and perhaps catastrophic economic and physical destruction.

Sometimes, leadership is about swallowing pride and being able to absorb verbal and diplomatic abuse (in this case, coming from a Trump Administration) than it is about confrontation and conflict, even if one feels one’s cause is just. Peace is its own reward and there are a number of outcomes that can be good for Iran that do not involve uranium enrichment. For one thing, after the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and watching the Arab Spring churn largely into chaos, destruction, and death, there is virtually no appetite in the U.S. for a war that would involve overthrowing Iran’s government and occupying Iran with American troops; thus, should Iran seek nuclear weapons capability as a way to prevent a U.S. invasion and the overthrow of Iran’s own government, it is trying to prevent something that in all likelihood will not be happening, yet the pursuit of such a goal would be ruinous for Iran, as plenty of military options for the Israel and the U.S. exist, with their superior air forces, that do not involve an invasion or overthrowing the Iranian government.

For another thing, if Trump cancels the agreement and Iran does not resume enrichment, the moral high ground on this issue (apart from other considerations) will be incredibly strong for Iran, and the pressure on Trump and the U.S. from the rest of the world powers will be considerable, so great that the pressure the U.S. faces could be severe and beyond verbal, and if Trump initiates major trade wars with countries like China and Mexico, sanctions against the U.S. for violating the agreement would be even greater possibility that they would otherwise, though not necessarily likely. If Iran can resist the temptation and behave more responsibly than American leadership, the support from Europe, Russia, and China would be that much greater. And, ultimately, those nations are doing far more business with Iran than the U.S. In the end, the temptation to resume enrichment would be great, and nobody likes to undergo that level of pressure, but the longer-term interests of Iran, and the lives of the Iranian people, will be much better served by not pursuing such a course. If Trump behaves poorly and Iran conducts itself with restraint, the stature of Iran in worldwide diplomatic circles will only increase, with a deeper level of respect than it currently enjoys. It Iran tried to match Trump taunt for taunt, insult for insult, threat for threat—as some of his former Republican rivals tried to do—Iran will only be seen as more like Trump than as conducting itself in a more dignified manner, and Trump’s Republican rivals show there is no out-Trumping Trump: if there is one thing the Republican primaries taught us, it is that Trump always wins when his opponents sink to his level. Finally, Iran can know that many American people will appreciate this restraint, and should politics shift and Democrats make a comeback, new people who noted Iran’s praise-worthy restraint would be empowered by such restraint to improve U.S.-Iranian relations and support Iran should it pursue policies that defuse tensions and further peace.

ISNA: And finally, do you believe amid tensions which still are in the two countries’ relationship, especially regarding US sanctions and Iran’s nuclear program, and that so far have not vanished as was predicted after JCPOA, that it would be possible that Iran and US could be better friends rather than enemies?

BF: Well, the relevant nuclear-related sanctions have been removed by the Obama Administration; other sanctions related to other matters are separate issues. But to whether Iran and the U.S. make better friends than enemies, of course we make better friends. It just becomes much harder with Trump and the Republican Party running America’s foreign policy, and especially if the sanctions that have been removed by Obama are reimposed by Trump. Clinton would have been tough, but fair, with Iran: she would have honored the JCPOA, and have used that a basis to work for breakthroughs with Iran on Syria, Iraq, Israel, and other regional issues; such work might have led to the lifting of other non-nuclear sanctions. I have always believed that Iran and the U.S. have plenty of issues with which they can find enthusiastic agreement. And I think it’s overdue for a grand ayatollah to come to Washington and for a president to go to Tehran.

And yet, the biggest obstacle to having the JCPOA become a springboard for further cooperation thus far has been Syria. I’ve personally been disappointed in Iran’s actions when it comes to Syria. As old as the concept and word “terrorism” has been around, it has been used by oppressive leaders as an excuse to crush opposition and impose iron-fisted rule. This can be the case if there is no actual terrorism or, in the case of Syria, if there is very real terrorism, even the worst in the world. Iran has good reason to fear Sunni extremist terrorism from the likes of ISIS and al-Qaeda, but one can stand against terrorism while also condemning the slaughter of Syria’s people on a massive scale by the Assad government. I understand and respect that Assad is an Alawite and that Alawites are religious cousins of Iran’s Shiites, but history will judge Iran for its support of Assad and Russia’s assault on large segments of Syria’s civilian population, not just terrorists. Even with ISIS in charge of Mosul, with the Iraqi Army having the U.S. as an ally and behaving in a relatively restrained way towards civilians, look at how much worse the civilian killings and refugee situation is for Aleppo with the Syrian forces’ assault backed by Russia (it is interesting that Iran has advisors, forces, and/or militias involved in both operations, and can easily tell the differences in the conduct and brutality of the operations for themselves even if it does not acknowledge these differences publicly). In particular, I was saddened that Iran did not forcefully condemn Assad’s relatively larger-scale use of chemical weapons against his own people back in the fall of 2013, because I know how horribly Iranians and suffered when Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons in an even more massive way against Iran during the Iran-Iraq war, with the support and cover-up of the Reagan Administration, one of America’s most shameful acts.

Thus, I was hoping that Iran could be the conscience of the Assad regime since it is clear that Assad and Putin have almost none when it comes to Syria’s people. Imagine if Iran was seen not only to be a protector of Shiites, but also of Sunnis in Syria? I still believe that Iran can act within Syria as a force to reduce the brutality and killing of the civil war, something very clearly in line with more mainstream Islamic teachings since the time of the Prophet Muhammed himself, who during war generally urged humane treatment over brutality (after all, the very first verse of the Quran refers to Allah by the title of “the Merciful,”) and to act to push against Assad’s government’s and Russia’s military’s acts of indiscriminate killing.  

If Iran were to ensure that Assad, if(?)/when(?) victorious, shows mercy and takes great care to protect civilians, Iran can play the most constructive role of any power in Syria given the present realities, eclipsing Russia, Turkey, the Gulf, and the West (including the U.S.) in helping to make a humanitarian difference and saves lives. It is beneath the dignity of Iran to be an accomplice in the abuses of Assad against his own people, and Iran can be more than just a no-questions-asked ally like Russia, which is even taking part in the mass killings with its air force and heavy weapons. While Iran’s own government has its issues with human rights, it has never done anything to its own people that rises to Assad’s level of brutality, even in the suppressions that followed the end of the 1979 Iranian Revolution; during the run-up the Revolution, the Shah, too, did not even come close to Assad’s current levels of mass murder. 

Part of the spirit of the Iranian Revolution was originally one of standing up to oppression; for Iran to be true to itself and its ideals, it must work to help alleviate the suffering of Syria’s people, not just Alawite, but Sunnis, too, Kurds, and all of Syria’s people, especially to protect civilians at the mercy of Assad’s government and Russia’s air force who have been shown no mercy or next to none. With its troops on the ground and its close ally Hezbollah heavily involved in fighting in Syria on Assad’s behalf, and with Assad’s own official forces so heavily depleted, Iran is in the best position to do something about human rights and saving lives in Syria. If it does so clearly, visibly, and verifiably under international observers, it will win hearts and minds all over the West and the Sunni world, in addition to the Shiite world. 

If it helps Assad kill genocidal or near-genocidal-numbers of Syrians and turns a blind eye to this reality, it will be behaving just like Russia is now and like Saddam Hussein behaved in Iraq, and far crueler than the Shah. I believe Iran can be better than this, and if that happens, maybe not under Trump, but eventually the American government will show substantive appreciation for such actions of protection and mercy, along with the rest of the world community. But right now, with the world horrified not just by ISIS (and rightfully so) but also by the Assad government’s actions in Syria and especially Aleppo (and rightfully so), Iran is associated with this killing in Syria and it makes it harder for the West to proceed on negotiating with Iran when it comes to other issues, negotiations that may lead to the removal of non-nuclear sanctions. In fact, Iran turning a blind eye to mass killing in Syria makes it that much harder for other regional partners to trust it in working to find common ground on and resolutions to other important Middle Eastern issues.

Any who doubt that Iran and the U.S. can find common ground should look only to the crisis with former-Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki from 2014, when the Obama Administration, Iran, Iraq’s Shiite political establishment, and Shiite religious leaders in both Iran and Iraq came together to insist the divisive Maliki step aside to give new, less divisive leadership a chance, giving eventual rise to the far more accommodating team of Dr. Haider al-Abadi (more on that in my article here). Iraqi, Iranian, and American interests are all better-off as a result, and especially the Iraqi people, thus proving American-Iranian cooperation can bring about positive change to the region. 

Ironically, the Trump Administration will be far less concerned about human rights than other recent American administrations and is seeking to come together with Russia, which makes Iran’s respect for human rights all the more important when it comes to Syria. I can say one thing: to be seen coming together with Putin and Trump in working against human rights and ganging up against Sunnis will not raise Iran’s standing globally, nor will it make things better for the people of the Middle East, whether they are Shiite, Sunni, or of other faiths; the last thing that is in Iran’s and the region’s interests is a worsening of the Sunni-Shiite conflict already playing out across the region. With the rise of Trump, Iran has a unique chance to be a champion of human rights, peace, and mercy in a region where now even fewer powers are acting towards those ends. I hope Iran’s leaders and people together see that this is a great opportunity for them, even in spite of the many challenges, some unfair, Iran may face in choosing such a course. But the right course is often not the easiest, as the lives of the Prophet Muhammad and the major Shiite Imams Ali and Hussain, so revered by Iranians, amply demonstrate.

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Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow him there at @bfry1981), and here are many more articles by Brian E. Frydenborg. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this content, or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

 Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse September 15, 2016  

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) September 15th, 2016

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

AMMAN — I’ve written repeatedly about 9/11 before: what it meant for me, what it should mean for Americans, how we have failed to properly honor the memory of the victims, how our nation has become worse, not better, since that fateful day, about all the missed opportunities. I think today it’s pretty clear that we as a nation still have not honored the memory of the victims through proper action, but what I could write about that now would be nothing new that I and others have not written before.

I’m not sure if it would make me feel better or worse to be able to write an article saying “9/11 helped to ruin us by starting a new style of politics that is ruining us.” In any case, I can’t, for while in many ways 9/11 must still clearly be regarded as a watershed, cataclysmic event in world history, let alone American politics and history, that sad truth is that the disgusting political gamesmanship of sucking in foreign policy and national security issues into the partisan maelstrom in the same manner as any other issue is not something that began (or ended) with 9/11, with the politics of 9/11 marking more continuity than change, just a larger example of growing partisanship amidst a rising tide of partisanship in post-Cold War America.

The big move towards consistent politicization in any significant way started almost exclusively with the Republican Party just a few years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the USSR, beginning with its withering partisan criticism of Bill Clinton’s efforts in Somalia in 1993, criticism that was wildly inconsistent and undermined U.S. policy.  When Republicans began using 9/11 as a partisan wedge issue in the run-up to the Iraq invasion of 2003 and in the 2004 presidential election, this was merely a continuation of the post-Cold War modus operandi of the Republican Party, which is only more extreme today. It is worth going through some of this history to better understand this dynamic besetting America today.

Bipartisanship During the Cold War, But Not For Bill Clinton

Somalia

In 1991, Somalia’s longstanding dictator, short of international support when he was no longer “needed” after the Cold War had drawn to a close, was overthrown, and the country fell into anarchy and warlordism. The political and security situation combined with a famine into one of the first great humanitarian disasters of the post-Cold War era. With the UN Security Council supporting a relief mission, and the Democratic-led U.S. Congress, including Republicans, urging support for such a mission, Republican President George H. W. Bush, though he had just lost re-election nearly two months earlier, announced on Dec. 4th, 1992, that he would send 28,000 U.S. troops as part of a peacekeeping force intended to ensure the distribution of food to hundreds of thousands of Somalis on the verge of starvation, a move supported by President-Elect Clinton. 

Not long after Clinton became president, though, Republicans especially began voicing strong criticism of Clinton’s efforts to sustain the mission, contradicting their earlier support for the mission under George H. W. Bush; while criticism was by no means coming from Republicans alone, they were generally particularly vocal and harsh in their criticism, exaggerating and distorting what was going on and using hyperbolic language to criticize a mission they were perfectly happy to support when commanded by a Republican president only a few months earlier. The mixed support of WWII veteran (and soon-to-be-Republican presidential nominee in 1996) Bob Dole was more the exception, rather than the rule, as Republicans were generally unified in opposing Clinton and succeeded in undermining public support and confidence in the mission, calling for an end to the mission and constantly threatening to cut off funding for the mission even while U.S. troops in the field were carrying it out, a mission that was far from a disaster and hardly a failure. Even when President Clinton announced a withdrawal date after the unfortunate October 1993 “black hawk down” incident, in which U.S. forces tangled with warlord forces and incurred relatively substantial casualties, many Republicans, rather than accept the withdrawal announcement as a sufficient political victory, pushed for a faster withdrawal than the one Clinton had called for; whatever Clinton did, these Republicans were sure to meet it with scorn and criticism. 

In the end, hundreds of thousands of Somali lives were saved by the mission, for all its faults. But Republicans seemed to be in lock-step with Osama bin Laden as viewing the mission as an American failure (even before the “black hawk down” incident), and sure helped to move public opinion in that direction despite the significant achievements of the mission. Perhaps even more hauntingly, the experience was a major influence on Clinton’s decision not to intervene during the Rwandan genocide that occurred only months later, in the spring of 1994.

Bosnia

Clinton was already clashing with Congress over the war in the disintegrating Yugoslavia in 1993, as well, as more and more reports of Serbs committing atrocities against Bosnian Muslims dominated the headlines. It was an odd mixture of Republicans and Democrats who said the Clinton Administration was doing too little, and Republicans and Democrats who argued the Administration was doing too much. Such wide-ranging bi-partisan criticism reflected how complex and difficult the situation was in the Balkans as Europe’s first real test of the post-Cold War era unfolded; against a backdrop of confused and divided U.S. lawmakers, European governments were nervous that any aggressive U.S. action would endanger their peacekeeping forces, already on the ground in the Balkans. In other words, there were no easy solutions and no single plan had widespread, bipartisan support or even strong agreement within one party. As president, Bill Clinton was in an unwelcome and lonely position in trying to craft a position on the conflict. This situation more or less continued through 1994, though after the November midterm elections, at least the leadership of the victorious Republicans signaled a desire for more forceful action.

But somewhat conflictingly, even as Republicans seemed to want to end the arms embargo to help arm the Bosnians (unwise for multiple reasons, e.g., that escalation could have prompted Russia to arm their Serbian friends, could have weakened the NATO alliance and prompted the UK and France to withdraw their forces from the region and force America’s hand in filling the void, measures that nonetheless also had some significant support from some Democrats; still, Clinton correctly noted that “…unilaterally lifting the arms embargo will have the opposite effects of what its supporters intend. It would intensify the fighting, jeopardize diplomacy and make the outcome of the war in Bosnia an American responsibility” and increased air strikes against the Serbs. But Republicans mostly balked when Clinton publicly weighed the idea of U.S. ground forces either assisting beleaguered UN peacekeepers or helping to enforce an eventual peace; thus, Republicans slammed him for not doing enough even while slamming him for raising the possibility of what would likely help the most. They also later balked at Clinton’s efforts to help support a new UN plan to create a rapid-reaction force of European troops to help the thinly-spread peacekeeping forces already on the ground.

When a cease-fire was finally negotiated in October 1995, and the U.S. held talks in November, a more partisan nature to opposing the president came into being, just when it was most crucial to achieve peace in the Balkans for Congress to support a long-term peace plan. Nearly every Republicans in the Senate but only one Democrat sent a letter to Clinton asking him to ask Congress for approval before committing any U.S. troops to a peacekeeping force; this was done just days before formal peace talks were to begin in the U.S., undercutting the president’s team’s negotiating authority at a crucial moment. Next, nearly the entire House Republican caucus voted on a successfully-passed (non-binding) resolution that spurned and disavowed Clinton’s promise to provide 20,000 troops as part of an eventual peacekeeping force, undermining the prospects of an agreement and an end to the war, but a majority of Democrats opposed this resolution even as a substantial minority voted with the Republicans. 

With negotiations between the warring parties underway on U.S. soil, House Republicans voted to prevent the deployment of U.S. troops without Congress specifically authorizing money to do so in what was largely a partisan vote, and even after the peace treaty was signed, House Republicans only narrowly failed in a bid to cut off funding for the mission (210-218) and Senate Republicans barely failed to pass a vote condemning the mission but “supporting” the troops (47-52). Another partisan vote passed just before the peace treaty was signed condemned Clinton’s decision to deploy troops, and another vote that would have offered language supporting the troops but not criticizing Clinton’s plan failed to pass pretty much along party lines the very day the treaty was signed. And in 1996, many Republicans rather myopically criticized both Clinton’s decision to provide substantial reconstruction aid for Bosnia and an extension of the peacekeeping mission. Despite Republican opposition, U.S. forces in Bosnia undoubtedly played a key and decisive role in forging and maintaining peace and stability in Bosnia and, in a larger sense, the Balkans and southeastern Europe.

Kosovo

Just a few years later, Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic was again threatening massive numbers of civilians, this time the mainly Muslim Kosovar Albanians in Serbia’s province of Kosovo. In response to a massive campaign of ethnic cleansing, NATO launched airstrikes against Serb forces threatening Kosovar Albanians. House Republicans, in particular, engaged in behavior that could reasonably (certainly) be said to have undermined the Clinton Administration’s efforts during the crisis. Not long before NATO began its airstrikes, a substantially large majority of Republicans in the Republican-dominated House voted to bar the use of American ground troops: “American soldiers have been trained to be warriors, not baby sitters,” was how House Majority Whip and Republican Tom DeLay put it. The measure was defeated by nearly every Democrat and a minority of Republicans teaming up to vote down the amendment. Even after the airstrikes began, a tie vote in the House failed to give public backing to the airstrikes. While Republican leaders tended to prevent direct challenges to the president in these cases, especially in the Senate, it was clear that many rank-and-file congressional Republicans, including a clear majority in the House, felt differently. Thus, when George W. Bush ran for president in 2000 and campaigned on pulling out of the peacekeeping efforts in the Balkans—making it clear how much value he placed on the missions in Bosnia and Kosovo—that position was not terribly surprising.

Of course, after 9/11, the Balkans receded greatly in importance in America…

9/11: More Continuity Than Change

Most people would have missed the fact that The 9/11 Commission Report, while produced ostensibly at a time when the nation was trying to heal and explicitly avoiding leveling particular blame with one administration or political party, nevertheless does make it clear how lax, unmotivated, and ill-prepared George W. Bush and his Administration were to deal with the crisis, and a careful reading (one which the general public did not even attempt or would even have been capable of attempting) showed that, while the Clinton Administration had not done everything it possibly could have done to go after bin Laden (after years of partisan Republican criticism whenever it had tried to act forcefully elsewhere!), it had increasingly focused on bin Laden as a threat over time and stridently recommended to Bush’s team during the 2000-2001 presidential transition to make bin Laden a top priority, advice which Bush’s people just as stridently refused to accept. Here is just one glaring example that exemplified both the Commission’s unwillingness to point fingers but willingness to still lay the clear picture there for those intelligent enough to follow the evidence:

“In May, President Bush announced that Vice President Cheney would himself lead an effort looking at preparations for managing a possible attack by weapons of mass destruction and at more general problems of national preparedness. The next few months were mainly spent organizing the effort and bringing an admiral from the Sixth Fleet back to Washington to manage it. The Vice President’s task force was just getting under way when the 9/11 attack occurred.” (6.5 The New Administration’s Approach)

Specifically, President Bush’s announcement that Cheney’s task force would be coming came May 8th, but presumably some thought and groundwork had occurred prior to this date. Then from May 8th until September 11th—more than four full months after Bush’s announcement—Cheney’s group had, famously, not met once; “The Vice President’s task force was just getting under way when the 9/11 attack occurred” is about as polite and diplomatic a way as possible to say that next-to-nothing had been done in those four months. One finds such an understated approach throughout the report, and an ability to look past it makes it clear a partisan gap, not in favor of senior Republican officials, in regards to the attention paid to bin Laden and al-Qaeda.

Much like after the terrorist attacks in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1983, that killed 258 Americans (among others), after 9/11 Democrats supported the Republican president—tending to give President Bush the benefit of the doubt, including then-Sen. Hillary Clinton—and conspicuously avoided playing a partisan political blame-game in the wake of a major attack against Americans even though the way both Presidents Reagan and his administration and Bush and his administration handled the events leading up to and surrounding the respective attacks in 1983 and 2001 were objectively ripe for criticism.

Of course, none of this mattered to Republicans in general, who were quick to blame 9/11 on Bill Clinton, continued to do so for years and still do so today, and who were also quick to politically weaponize foreign policy and national security as a partisan club with which to beat down Democrats into submission and defeat.  Especially as debate on potential and then actual war in Iraq intensified, those who raised questions, doubts, or criticism about the decision to go to war or even how the war was being prosecuted were loudly shouted down as “unpatriotic” and/or “not supporting the troops” (I had a reputation as one of the few liberals on my small conservative college campus back in the day, and late one night at a party in 2003 one drunken Republican angrily asked me “Why do you hate the troops?”). This happened in spite of the fact that the decision to invade Iraq in 2003 and the prosecution of the Iraq war were far more deficient and problematic than the H. W. Bush/Clinton Somalia intervention and Clinton’s two Balkan interventions. Democrats also did not really intensify their opposition until it was quite clear that Iraq was going from bad to worse and the promised WMDs that were the main ostensible pretext for the invasion never materialized.

The rancor of the debate in 2002 and 2003 was just a warmup for the 2004 general election campaign between Democratic Senator John Kerry, a decorated Vietnam war veteran who was wounded twice in action, and incumbent President George W. Bush, whose stateside service in the Texas Air National Guard was largely understood as a way to keep him out of having to serve in Vietnam. A group calling itself “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” attacked Kerry on his very Vietnam record, disputing his heroism, his accounts of what happened during his service, and his worthiness of receiving any of the medals he did receive with a bevy of shamefully false and misleading accusations, most notably displayed on prominent television ads and myopic media coverage that damaged Kerry’s candidacy greatly with various segments of the public and maybe was the greatest single factor contributing to his defeat at the hands of Bush that November. Lies, not truth, prevailed in 2004. Some of the impetus behind those attacks on Kerry had to do with the fact that Kerry, then as a recently decorated combat veteran, famously and prominently came out against the Vietnam War just after he had served in it and while that war was still very much ongoing. Even years after the election, Kerry found that he was still having to defend his reputation against those 2004 lies about his service in Vietnam. The attacks were so damaging that the term “swift boat” came to be a phrase commonly used to describe extreme and false political attacks.

This was just another chapter in the right’s attempts to both “own” national security as an issue to the exclusion of Democrats and serving up caricatures of liberals as haters-of-the-military and extremist hippies, caricatures that served as straw-man phantoms and that bore little resemblance to reality. Other recent chapters had been 1992’s and 1996’s attempts by the Republicans to portray Bill Clinton as a raging antiwar pot-smoking draft-dodging hippie unfit to be Commander-in-Chief.

Recently, It’s Just Getting Worse

Jonathan Ernst / Reuters

While the rise of Obama occurring hand-in-hand with an increasing, newly dominant anti-war feeling in America meant such fault-lines, concerns, and lines of attack would recede as they became increasingly ineffective (especially after the Obama Administration successfully took out Osama bin Laden; Mitt Romney barely mentioned, or challenged Obama on, foreign policy during the campaign homestretch in 2012), when the Arab Spring really turned for the dramatically worse and ISIS burst into view, Republicans, once again, found effective returns from investing in familiar tactics.

Yes, back were the days of Republicans using national security and foreign policy in hyperpartisan politicized attacks during Obama’s second term. The baseless, repeatedly-proven-to-be-false accusations trying to pin the blame on Hillary Clinton for the Benghazi attacks that killed four Americans in Benghazi, Libya—including our then-Ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens—is perhaps the best example of this shameful disgrace of abuse of the concepts of oversight and political discourse (especially when contrasted with how Democrats responded to the 1983 Beirut and 2001 9/11 attacks, as discussed above). Other great recent examples of Republican weaponization of foreign policy and national security politics include trying to blame Obama for both the rise and success of ISIS, both accusations being quite factually incorrect, as well as pretty much the entire Republican/Trumpian critique on immigration and the despicable demonization of Obama’s and Hillary Clinton’s refugee policies (and refugees, for that matter; the previous five links are to my own detailed rebuttals of each criticism). The irony is lost on Republicans, too, as they criticize Obama both for being feckless on Syria but for doing too much on Libya, when criticism of one of those policies begs the very response of the one they are criticizing in the other, take your pick; the same can be said when they try to blame Obama for Ukraine’s crisis, even though Russia’s Putin also invaded and annexed parts of Georgia under W. Bush’s watch. The irony in their criticism is also lost on Republicans because they themselves either have terrible alternative “policies,” if they have any at all, a reality simply augmented terribly by their terrible candidate for the presidency but a reality that is very much the status quo in today’s Republican Party even without Trump.

Conclusion

Linda Davidson/The Washington Post

One thing that is certain is that the trend of Republicans hyperpartisanizing and politicizing national security issues as a party began under Clinton in the 1990s with Somalia, not with 9/11. To a very large extent, national security and foreign policy were bipartisan issues during the Cold War, but that did practice not survive after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Ancient republican (small “R!”) Roman historian Sallust hits the nail right on the head with the hammer describing this dynamic some 2,000 years ago in his Roman Republic:

“…the pattern of routine partisanship and factionalism, and, as a result, of all other vicious practices had arisen in Rome… It was the result of peace and an abundance of those things that mortals consider most important. I say this, because, before the destruction of Carthage, mutual consideration and restraint between the people and the Roman Senate characterized the government. Among the citizens, there was no struggle for glory or domination. Fear of a foreign enemy preserved good political practices. But when that fear was no longer on their minds, self-indulgence and arrogance, attitudes that prosperity loves, took over. As a result the tranquility they had longed for in difficult times proved, when they got it, to be more cruel and bitter than adversity…In this way all political life was torn apart between two parties, and the Republic, which had been our common ground, was mutilated.” ( The Jurgurthine War 41.1-5)

With the U.S., we can simply replace Rome with ourselves and Carthage with the Soviet Union, and that’s pretty much where we are today. While we faced the more-or-less existential threat of the Soviet Union, bipartisanship governed much (though hardly all) of our politics when it came to foreign policy and national security, and American victory in the Cold War was largely the result of decades of bipartisan policy and internal Soviet dynamics, hardly just because of the efforts of one man named Reagan, as many conservatives would have you believe.   Since then, largely because of the Republican Party (at least until the rise of the Bernie Sanders crowd), good practices are very much on the decline, not least of all in terms of how politics and issues of both foreign policy and national security have become toxically mixed, and we can’t blame this on 9/11, for it was a disease already growing in our body politic years before.

Today, there is hardly anybody left in a Republican leadership position who is someone like Bob Dole, who, though often opposing Clinton, put American interests and productive outcomes in foreign affairs ahead of partisanship and political gain, often acting to reign in his unruly Party members. There does not seem to be any new blood among Republicans who are capable of leading and cooperating like Dole, which means this untenable status quo of today is something with which we will be stuck for some time to come.

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Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse March 29, 2016 

By Brian E.Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) March 29th, 2016

REUTERS/Alaa Al-Marjani

AMMAN — Terrorism is one of these words behind which the intended use most often carries a hope that those hearing or reading it will instinctively shudder and recoil.  Like all such charged words—racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, genocide—the gravity attached to them has an inverse correlation with higher frequency, more careless usage; such words retain their power and effectiveness if and when they are specifically applied selectively to instances that match a relatively clear definition and/or scope of activity; overuse cheapens and diminishes their power.  That is not to say that such terms do not sometimes deserve reconsideration, reappraisal; sometimes it is necessary to update and expand our understandings of such delicate terms.  At the same time, a vocal minority that simply wants to apply the labels because they just really don’t like something or someone—calling drones strikes terrorism and the equivalent of ISIS attacks, calling almost all Donald Trump supporters racists, calling almost all Republicans sexist, calling all critics of Israeli government policy anti-Semitic, calling Israeli actions towards Palestinians genocide—must be called out for what they are: partisans trying to hijack one awful thing to make something else they don’t like be condemned at a higher level.  Thus, when dealing with these terms, it is important that the conversation around them attempts to forge a degree of clarity.  If such efforts are not undertaken or fail, it is harmful to the ability to unite and fight actions that clearly fall under the appropriate use of these terms, and terrorism is no exception.  As the late Christopher Hitchens noted in 2002, “If any of the terms in our new lexicon has undergone a process of diminishing returns, it is the word “terrorism.””

What’s in a Name?

Violence is part of humanity, even from our earliest days; it was in nature and part of primates’ existence before they even evolved into humans; therefore, the violence of humanity predates humanity.  One thing that is certain about human-on-human violence is that the parties on the receiving end will always protest, and quite often, it is normal for the aggrieved parties to cry “terrorism” when they receive such violence.  Even if the aggrieved party is justly angry and justly thinks the violence in unjustly meted out, the label terrorism may not be appropriate.  Every person has the right to defend him or herself and every government has the right to defend its people and territory and to use violence to both stop active aggression and prevent aggression where there is a clear and present danger, even to the point of striking outside its borders.  A U.S. drone that kills either 1.) a group of active militants and several bystanding civilians or 2.) kills civilians by honestly mistaking them for militants cannot be equated with a group of militants that deliberately target and kill civilians as an end target.  At the same time, if locals use guerilla tactics against U.S. military forces stationed abroad in, say, Iraq, simply giving them the same label as militants who are killing civilians in markets or houses of worship is also inaccurate.  Labeling all of these perpetrators terrorists and acts terrorism is not only inaccurate, but counterproductive to the point of making the term meaningless, subject to the whims and partisan beliefs of whomever wants to appropriate the term to denigrate, rightfully or wrongfully, anyone with whom he or she disagrees.  To go back to Hitchens, “we need a more exhaustive and exclusive and discriminating definition of it, or recognition of it.”  For him:

“It’s glib and evasive to say that “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter,” because the “freedom fighters” are usually quite willing to kill their “own” civilians as well. But then, so are states… All parties to all wars will at some time employ terrorizing methods. But then everybody except a pacifist would be a potential supporter of terrorism. And if everything is terror, then nothing is—which would mean we had lost an important word of condemnation.” 

For most people, there is “a simpler – and perhaps more honest – definition: terrorism is violence committed by those we disapprove of,” to quote Brian Whitaker in a Guardian piece.

All Terrorists & All Violence Are Not Created Equal

Charles Tilly/Sociological Theory

Hitchens, a lifelong socialist with a soft spot for revolutionaries and rebels—from Iraqi Kurds to Leon Trotsky—would never equate the IRA or Hamas with ISIS or al-Qaeda.  For him the test is the realistically possible and rationality: do these militants ask for something that a rational person could live with and willingly accept—an independent state, an end to military occupation, an end to institutionalized discrimination—or do they seek that which a rational person could not willingly accept: mass oppression, mass murder, forced religious conversion, to go centuries back in time? In Hitchens’ mind, true “Terrorism, then, is the tactic of demanding the impossible, and demanding it at gunpoint;” he therefore writes: “Enfolded in any definition of “terrorism,” it seems to me, there should be a clear finding of fundamental irrationality.”  For Hitchens, “What this means in practice is the corollary impossibility of any compromise with” groups that practice terrorism in this purer sense.

The distinction Hitchens is making is that the label both of people as terrorists and actions as terrorism is more aptly reserved both for people who, and actions that, seek to impose a system of terror, rather than be applied to those who simply employ certain violent tactics for understandable, rational, and even laudable goals.  In other words, whether one is fighting for liberation and freedom as an end or for an end of imposing a murderous regime that butchers its own people and destroys freedom matters far more than the means employed in such fights (though they matter too).  For Hitchens, often those terrorist groups concerned with more noble ends are far more discriminate and measured in their means than those groups for whom brutality is the ultimate temporal end, and while in any conflict, destruction is a necessary evil of means, its scale and especially whether the destruction of lives and freedom is the end itself in a temporal sense are what matters most.

In a video discussion of WWII, Hitchens, along with Victor Davis Hanson, noted that while both the Axis and the Allies engaged in deliberate terror air bombings of civilian populations, and that such actions are hardly simply easily summed up as excusable under the circumstances, what Western Allied powers did with enemy civilian populations under their control—took care of them and spread stable, democratic government—compared to what Axis powers did to enemy civilian population under their control—systematic murder and enslavement and the propagation of totalitarian systems—is the primary distinction which by far matters the most even if does not come close to fully absolving the West for its conduct in terror bombings such as Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki.  War brings out excess and the worst in humanity by its very nature, but even if both sides commit similar and comparable excesses at times, scale and what ends inspired those excesses to be committed in the first place are not things that can be forgotten and certainly expose any argument attempting to equate the Nazi and Imperial Japanese regimes with the U.S. and UK governments.

There is a limit for Hitchens to those whom we can define as rational, as “some definitions cannot be stretched beyond a certain point, and the death wish of the theocratic totalitarians, for themselves and others, is too impressive to overlook. One has to say sternly: If you wish martyrdom, we are here to help—within reason.”

Hitchens makes a passionate case for primarily using the terms terrorist and terrorism to refer not merely to tactics but end goals, and his argument is not without its strong points.  But for now and for some time policymakers and international affairs experts have loosely agreed on a broader definition (if not all its specifics) that is still both useful and far less narrow than less useful definitions.

Mainstream Views on What Is Terrorism

Joao Silva/The New York Times

Contrary to the more mainstream understanding of terrorism today, the ancient Greeks actually conceived of terrorism as a form of government (terrorcracy or tromokratos), much like democracy, monarchy, aristocracy, and so forth, in which terror was the main way the state functioned and kept law and order.  The word “terrorism” first really appears in 1795 in French (“terrorisme”) to describe Jacobin rule of France during the French Revolution, so its original use was describing government rule through terror.  It is only in the mid-to-late-nineteenth century when “terrorist” as a term is used to describe attacks on the government by the UK and Russia, respectively.  Thus, Hitchens’ approach is interesting in that his preference is for the term to be applied to non-state groups that seek to embody terror and make it an end in the way of the Jacobin regime. 

Like Hitchens, who saw a major aspect of terrorism as being an absence of reason, terrorism expert Bruce Hoffman also discusses a useful definition of terrorism that involves defining what it is not.  Where Hitchens pushes a definition that involves the absence of reason, Hoffman tries to define terrorism by going through the types of violence that it is not and showing that terrorism fills that gap.  For Hoffman, this leaves us approaching a definition that is “the deliberate creation and exploitation of fear through violence or the threat of violence in the pursuit of political change.” One Israeli definition is basically the same, but narrows the terrorists’ targets to “civilian targets.”  Similarly, even as the term remains challenging to define, consensus within many varying international legal definitions of terrorism involve “common core elements” that at least include violence against civilians as part of a campaign to intimidate or coerce populations and/or governments, an understanding that most major mainstream analyses seem to have confirmed, even if there is significant disagreement over additional acts as to how they are—or are not—terrorism where and when government and/or military targets can be included.

Counterterrorism Must Necessarily Be Complex & Nuanced

Additionally, while few would disagree that terrorism is a tactic that states are capable of utilizing directly (“state terrorism”) either on their own people or on others, terrorism, when used as a word by itself, generally refers to non-state actors, though state sponsorship is not ruled out.  That is not to say the “state terrorism” is a better phenomenon, more legitimate or respectable, than non-state terrorism, and there is an interesting philosophical debate as to how the word terrorism should be used and to what, in its purest sense, it should refer to, but that is not the focus of the policy maker; for policymakers and the elected officials we choose, “state terrorism,” as with all actions coming directly from state structures, can often be dealt with fairly conventionally on a macro-level through the interstate international relations system.  Those carrying out those acts of terrorism, except, generally, at the lowest level, are generally protected by a state or states; to deal with them, states must be dealt with.  State-sponsored terrorism requires a more hybrid response, as a state can be pressured to reduce or stop its support for such terrorism through traditional means, but to whatever the degree the terrorist group receiving sponsorship is an independent actor it will likely have to be dealt with using more traditional counterterrorism means, which is the type of response that governs non-state terrorist acts.  Compared to non-state terrorism, state-terrorism is relatively easy to manage: a single state government, even if not wholly united, is far easier to deal with than a non-state actor because the points of possible engagement and leverage are limited and generally well-understood.  Negotiating and interacting with terrorist groups that are not part of a state structure is far more challenging precisely because such groups are not constrained by the rules of the international state system; if a faction of a state government breaks off and does not honor an international agreement, that state’s government can still be held responsible, and it can even be supported to give it the ability to reign in its recalcitrant faction.  But non-state, independent terrorist groups, whose organizations are often opaque, diffuse, and decentralized, where there is no steady or reliable point of contact or central authority and where there can sometimes be little or no desire for negotiation on the side of the terrorist organization (especially over long-term conflict resolution as opposed to, say, a cease fire or prisoner exchange), require a very different set of nontraditional approaches and means for the policymaker to deal with them; this evolving, non-traditional set of tools is what is most is most often understood to fall under the term “counterterrorism,” which itself can have much overlap with the toolbox of “counterinsurgency (COIN),” as terrorism as a tactic can be used as part of war or when there is no war, falling under the watchful eyes of both civilian and military sentinels, sometimes at different times and/or under different jurisdictions, other times simultaneously.  Not every militant attack in time of war, rebellion, or insurgency is necessarily considered terrorism though some are, depending on the definition, but generally every militant attack that is not of a traditional criminal nature and that is outside of a war/rebellion/insurgency setting is considered terrorism.

Such distinctions may seem moot, but they are from it, as are the distinctions Hitchens makes between terrorists that are rational (those who can be accommodated by reasonable and just means) and those who are irrational (those for whom there is no reasonable or just accommodation possible).  Smart, effective counterterrorism approaches will make such distinctions a core driver and a core base of such policy.  Such approaches were exactly how Gens. Petraeus and Chiarelli went after the problem of violence in Iraq, and in a short period of time, they had brought groups that had been using terrorism against U.S. forces and the Iraqi government over to fighting on behalf of U.S. forces and the Iraqi government against other, more extreme terrorists like al-Qaeda in Iraq (ISIS’s precursor), and Iraq was soon on the path to dramatically decreased levels of violence, levels that were the lowest since the war began.  The recent rise of ISIS is hardly an indictment on this strategy, as, in the end, violence in Iraq only rose in 2013 in response to the terrible sectarian policies of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and spillover from the Syrian Civil War, over a year after the last U.S. forces withdrew from Iraq late in 2011.  If anything, these events show how closely related the incidence of terrorism is to oppression, politics, and policy, and how variable it is in relation to changes in all of these.

Republicans/Conservatives Often Fail to Grasp Counterterrorism Basics

But too many conservatives and Republicans don’t even seem to acknowledge such realities.  In fact, for a problem that requires a decidedly nuanced approach, their prescriptions tend to lack nuance altogether.

To be fair, a good number of leading Republicans are careful to acknowledge that Islam as a whole is not the problem, and that ISIS does not reflect Islamic values in a generally, mass-practiced sense, that the West is not in a titanic civilizational struggle with the Islamic world: Jeb Bush, Paul Ryan, Lindsey Graham, and a number of others. 

But many—far too many—do not, including Trump and Ted Cruz, two of the last three remaining candidates for the Republican nomination; Dr. Ben Carson, the last of the candidates to drop out before Marco Rubio, also fell into this trap.  And they and those who think like them are the ascending, dominant voices in the Republican Party today.  Too many Republicans and conservatives want to lump all terrorists into the irrational, terror-as-an-end categorization; the only solution is eradication and marginalization.  When Republicans talks about terrorism, they never shy away from linking it with Islam (and the vast majority of Republicans are in favor of at least temporarily banning all Muslims from entering the U.S., à la Trump); they prefer to talk about a broad, civilizational clash à la Samuel Huntington; for them, it is a war of America standing up for Western, Judeo-Christian values against a foe that represents Eastern, Islamic values that are the antithesis of everything for which the U.S. stands.  These people tend to inflate the conflict, describe it in grandiose terms, and push for extreme, counterproductive policies.  In this vein, Republicans tend to ascribe blind hatred of the West, freedom, and Christianity as the main motives of terrorists.  You almost never hear them talk about imperialism, colonialism, mass poverty, a lack of dignity and opportunity, and the oppression of U.S.-backed regimes as root causes and motivators for terrorism even though they clearly often are.  They tend to dismiss the reality that as awful as terrorists generally are, they also often have very legitimate grievances that need to be addressed; rather, for many Republicans, all terrorists are the same purely evil people with purely evil motives that must be utterly shunned and destroyed.

This mindset in part explains why they are so against diplomacy with Iran, the main sponsor of increasingly-less-terroristic Hezbollah, and so for confrontation and non-engagement.  As I have taken time to point out before, such approaches tend to bolster both the stature and number of extremists, including both extremist politicians and extremist violent groups, including terrorists.  Just recently, moderates in Iran trounced hard-line conservatives in elections mere months after the West’s nuclear deal with Iran.  Predictably, Republicans did not alter their illogical, near-universal, near-total opposition to the deal, even as the deal is clearly showing tangible, positive results on a significant scale. 

The idea of one policy for both ISIS and Hamas, and for all terrorist groups—failing to use the political carrot to moderate the behavior of more rationally-disposed terrorists like the latter in favor of pushing for an all-out confrontation is a policy that will fail to defuse conflict when there are serious chances to do so and will, instead, inflate it, causing more death and destruction in both the short and long-term and making long-term settlement or resolution of the relevant conflicts far more unlikely—is not an idea that advances the interests of the U.S. or makes it safer.  The one-size-fits-all approach that Republicans generally favor flies in the face of decades of conflict studies analyses and research, and in the face of history itself. 

Even recent history reinforces these truths: the importance of the example of the IRA/Sinn Féin in Ireland and its long, violent struggle with the British government cannot be overstated (including the example of conservative British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s failed hard-line policies in Northern Ireland), even as it is clear groups like Hamas and Hezbollah are hardly carbon copies.  Still, both Hamas and Hezbollah, like the IRA/Sinn Féin before them, have seen a dramatic moderation of their terrorist activities since their very bloody inceptions.  Successful policy over time will be one that makes distinctions and harnesses and encourages these moderating trends, rather than pushes them in the opposite direction and paints with a broad brush, as both the recent Israeli government missteps and missed opportunities leading to the summer 2014 Gaza conflict and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s misleading attempts to equate Hamas and ISIS illustrate.  Part of the same conflict, Fatah/the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) operated very much as a terrorist organization in past; since the early 1990s, and most especially after the death of Arafat, the terror role has diminished—now arguably ceased—to the degree that now it is far more common for Fatah/the PLO to be accused of inciting terror, of being complicit with terror, or of not preventing terror rather than committing terror, even by Israel, its archfoe.  As messy as these conflicts have been and often still are, the trends with these particular groups are undeniably reassuring and moving in the direction of less violence compared to recent decades.

In short, a successful counterterrorism strategy will make important distinctions between terrorist groups of different types, rather than lump them all together, allowing for the possibility of long-term negotiation and settlement with some terrorists even as others prove unwilling to consider diplomacy; if anything, there is even the possibility of causing divides within terrorist organizations between those who want to pursue engagement and those who prefer conflict, internal division that would almost always be beneficial to the opponents of such terrorist groups.

A Discerning Definition of Terrorism Helps Us All

In the end, terrorism will be difficult to define with an extremely high degree of specificity, and that task may even be, and is likely, impossible.  However, a vague yet still useful and usable definition beyond people labeling whatever violence they don’t like as terrorism and its perpetrators as terrorists is quite possible by looking at what clearly is not terrorism and what clearly is terrorism, even if there will undoubtedly be some gray areas.  Terror is undeniably part of terrorism, but any good military will try to scare its opponents into submission, either by the ferocity of its attacks or by the overwhelming relative power of its military might.  Since we have a lexicon which describes both acceptable and unacceptable military action under international law, and since “war crimes” and “war criminal” carry stigmas comparable to the labels “terrorist” and “terrorism,” it is both unhelpful and unproductive to try to blur this distinction. 

This goes for multiple sides in this discussion: Palestinians targeting Israel military targets with violence on their own legally recognized territory are more properly thought of as rebels and insurgents than terrorists, and labeling excessive Israeli military actions against Palestinians as terrorism serves no purpose when war crime vocabulary is already clear and well-defined.  The attempts by Israelis to enlarge the definition of terrorism to cover any and all violence directed at Israeli targets, whether civilian or military, is no more accurate or helpful than Palestinians trying to label all Israeli military activity, even when justified, as either war crimes or terrorism.  Such use of such terms only encourages eye rolls and a boy-who-cried-wolf-likelihood to ignore future accusations using these terms.  We could say the same for situations with American occupation forces currently in Afghanistan and formerly in Iraq, and to the U.S. government’s credit, it has increasingly become more circumspect in applying the terms “terrorism” and “terrorist,” recognizing that some local fighters are actually more aptly called insurgents.  Middle-Eastern locals and governments who are often understandably unhappy with U.S. drone policy, likewise, should rethink their application of the term “terrorism” to U.S. drone strikes, as the main use of them is to kill specific suspected militants that have either carried out or assisted or are preparing to carry out or assist violent attacks against civilians and/or U.S. or allies troops.  Civilians are not the intended targets of drone strikes even if they are killed, and the main purpose of drone strikes is not to intimidate the general population or governments of these locations where the strikes occur.  Errant strikes that kill mostly or only civilians are, of course, to be deplored, and more care needs to be taken to avoid such mistakes, but they are in no way moral equivalents to suicide bombers killing civilians for the sake of killing civilians in mosques and markets, and, as in other cases, simply throwing the words terrorism and terrorist back at the U.S. government because the victims are understandably unhappy with the results is not a blueprint for a useful definition of such terms but is very much a blueprint for a meaningless, subjective term to be used to describe any type of violence, justified or unjustified, of which one party or another does not approve. 

Intentional killing of civilians in and of itself and the desire for such intentional killing to force a change in policy/politics through its intimidating and terrorizing effects is a terrible thing; the ability to loudly and clearly label such acts terrorism enhances the ability to fight these acts and further stigmatize those who carry them out and their supporters; unproductively broadening the scope of these terms cheapens their use and the ability to single out such acts.  If every airstrike, drone strike, and militant attack on government and military installations is labelled terrorism, their perpetrators terrorists, then pretty much all political violence, even including just war and self-defense, can be labeled terrorism and the social, legal, political, and security tools needed to reign in the most heinous types of violence that target those most defenseless of all—non-combatant civilians—are weakened, leaving those most vulnerable of all people with even fewer defenses than before. 

It is in trying to be more reserved and circumspect with labeling certain things terrorism that we can empower those who fight against such violence and better protect the civilian populations that nearly always bear the brunt of it.  That is not to diminish or excuse war crimes and improper use of force by state militaries, Western or otherwise, but such misdeeds are better labeled using more traditional means, in part because more well-established, traditional tools of state-to-state interaction, international organizations, and international law already exist to deal with such excesses.  Casually labeling war crimes terrorism and war-criminals terrorists, in addition, can in turn have the effect of also diminishing the power of and seriousness of the war-crimes and terrorists labels. 

In the end, a more careful definition and more careful approach to terrorism will save more lives and weaken terrorists further than more careless, less nuanced approaches, which may actually empower terrorists and make us less secure.  In an age of hypersensitivity that is further amplified by global social media, language carries an additional weight when dealing with such weighty subjects.

Spencer Platt/Getty Images

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Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse January 4, 2016  

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) January 4th, 2016; alternate version published on Global Risk Insights

AMMAN — The year 2015 very much seemed to be, and will likely be remembered as, a year of transition, and not generally for the better, filled with many surprises. Below is a list of topics related to risk that defined the year, with five negative trends and one surprisingly positive one. The list is hardly comprehensive, but it would also be hard to not include any of them in any discussion of the major developments of 2015, even if one argue that others also deserve inclusion/recognition.

1.) The staying power of the Islamic State

YouTube

Perhaps even more shocking that the initial rise and onslaught of the group now known as ISIS (The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria/al-Sham) is their staying power: under not insignificant military pressure from the U.S., Iraq, Syria, several European/NATO states, various rebels groups and nominally Russia (which is targeting mainly non-ISIS groups) and some (minor) action from Arab nations, ISIS has not only survived but thrived. This is the case even as it has lost some of its gains from its peak territorial power (Iraq only just recently—apparently—managed to retake the city of Ramadi from ISIS, which has held it for most of the year, and is not even close to regaining sovereignty in much of Western Iraq, let alone the situation in Syria), so even as ISIS has suffered some setbacks in Iraq and Syria, it has seen its power increase in Libya, Egypt’s Sinai, and elsewhere, and has also demonstrated its global reach as far away as Paris, France, and San Bernardino, California, in the United States. Though the favored political rhetoric involves talk of “eradicating” and “destroying” ISIS, such talk is not only wildly premature, it borders on the farcically ridiculous. The unfortunate truth is that ISIS is here to for the foreseeable future, in one form or another. With the death of Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda receding somewhat into the background, the West might have thought that terrorism was not much of a global problem, but a regional one successfully contained in places far away; instead, ISIS has made clear that that terrorism is not fading away, and perhaps its greatest success is to direct the attention of large portions of the population of countries like France and the United States to consider ISIS/terrorism a—or the—major issue they face, whereas before few French or Americans would have prioritized such so highly.

2.) China’s economy comes back down to earth

Agence France-Presse

After decades of remarkably consistent and robust economic growth, the Chinese economic juggernaut has plummeted down from the celestial heavens and had taken on a far more earthly, vulnerable quality. Hitting the lowest officially announced levels since the world economic/financial crisis was in full gear early in 2009, China said its GDP growth rate slowed to 6.9% in 2015’s third quarter, but there is plenty of suspicion surrounding that figure, as some experts and indicators point towards what could actually be a (significantly?) lower number. Furthermore, the overall trend this year thus far has been a significantly downward one compared to 2014 and earlier years. All this affects all manner of global economic indicators, as China’s massive economic engine consumes and outputs many things; global oil prices are but one of the casualties of China’s slowing economy. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been able to fairly easily deal with both labor and political unrest while its economy was doing better, but one thing to watch in 2016 will be how the CCP handles what will surely be growing unrest as the economy in China is expected to continue to slow down. Another thing to watch will be how China’s crisis will further affect the global economy. Finally, how this crisis affects China’s effort to shift from an economy driven on manufacturing exports to a domestic consumer-based economy will also be telling. All-in-all, China and its leadership is looking at a challenging 2016.

3.) The resurgence of refugees

There is something deeply disturbing about the fact that seventy years after the end of WWII, the world is seeing the largest global displacement of human beings from their homes since the end of that conflict which was in absolute terms the most destructive the world has ever seen. At the end of 2014, the number of refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs: those who fled their homes but did not leave their countries) was nearly sixty million, and that number has only increased this year, so that roughly one out of every 122 people in the world has been forced to flee home. That the international community has been unable—no, to be honest, unwilling—to 1.) stem the tide of increasing refugees and/or 2.) settle existing refugees with any zeal or energy proportionate to the crisis is a testament to the failure of said community to live up to the hopes and dreams that characterized the founding of the United Nations just a few months after the end of WWII. This failure has produced pathetically tragic results. From Jordan to Italy, waves of displaced bring considerable risk and possibility of destabilization. Specifically, the wave of migrants into Europe (particularly from Syria) has been a major catalyst for a number of developments there, which launches into the next main theme of 2015…

4.) EU in crisis mode and lurching to the right

Reuters

Though hardly unforeseeable, the refugee flow into Europe has touched off a series of crises that has meant steep challenges to the European Union as a political entity, though, as usual, predictions of the EU’s demise are wildly premature. Apart from the crisis of dealing with some 1,000,000 refugees entering Europe (with the EU only formally settling a startlingly mere 190 of them so far) the refugee influx has invigorated Europe’s far right and helped it to rise to newfound positions of power. In Germany, the EU’s most powerful state, Chancellor Angela Merkel is “under fire” for her liberal refugee policy there and a right-wing party is polling ahead of all others in Sweden, which threatens Sweden’s position as a bastion of liberal immigration policy. The earlier economic crises have laid open rifts within the European polity that were only made wider in 2015, and while some may take a degree of inspiration in the rise of new populist parties in Spain, the political chaos this has fostered must also be acknowledged. Voters there and in Portugal and Greece seemed to reject the collective EU solutions for their economic crises (even after a third massive bailout for Greece!), casting doubt on the ability of the EU to move forward collectively economically. Another election has empowered the far right in Poland, and right-wing parties are performing extremely well in places like Austria and even Denmark. And in the wake of the ISIS attacks in Paris, only a unifying of socialists and conservatives headed off a major victory by France’s main far-right party. Not only in these places, but throughout Europe, the sharp rise of the right is undeniable. Even some leftist European leaders are now flirting with and mimicking, to a degree, those on the far-right. To coin The Economist’s phrase, this is “[t]he march of Europe’s little Trumps,” which brings the reader to the next main development…

5.) Political chaos in the United States

AP Images

In case Americans are not aware of this fact, let it be clear: the rest of the world, from Europe to the Middle East, is paying attention to the American two-party political race just enough to shocked and dismayed at the one-man-phenomenon known as Donald Trump, who has been the Republican front-runner since July and will still be the front-runner going into 2016, something very few political-powers-that-be predicted. Many a punditclaimed that his campaign would implode almost as soon as he entered the race, but yours truly wrote only a few weeks after he had taken the lead that it would be foolish to dismiss Trump too easily or too quickly. The world’s most powerful nation with the most powerful military (one which it has shown it is not afraid to use aggressively) is showing a degree of political chaos and unpredictability not seen in generations. While smart money would be on Hillary Clinton beating Trump or any of the more extremist Republican political candidates who have been doing well in polling of late, one thing is for certain: the world is watching with a degree of fear and horror at what is coming out of the American presidential race, at least on the Republican side, and the political unraveling of the Republican Party in 2015 may yet move global mountains in the not too distant future, for better or for worse.

BONUS: Iran!

While it is too early to make any surefire long-term claims about Iran and its regional proxies, 2015 at the very least will be remembered as a year when Iran made it clear that it would not be sidelined, will be there to defend Shiite leaders and people, and is eager to play a larger role in the greater-Middle East. 2015 saw the U.S. reach out to both Iran and Cuba in ways unprecedented for decades; a big-loser here was non-engagement. Another big loser in the long-run is Sunni extremism: from Yemen and Lebanon to Iraq and Syria, Iran is a force supporting Shiite interests that Sunni leaders are now undoubtedly going to have to reckon with; unlike in many instances before when Sunni leaders avoided politics in the hope that U.S. support or military action would help them crush enemies they should otherwise accommodate or co-opt, America reaching out to Iran and helping to forge a major international nuclear agreement with global powers is a signal that the Sunni world better start getting on the same page; a regional cold war fought with proxy-militias and terrorist groups is fraught with peril for all sides and could turn the whole region into Syria if tensions are not reduced and conflict not mitigated.

For those who are naysayers, it should be pointed out that there is, simply, no better realistic alternative than this agreement and that Iran-sponsored militant Shiite Islam and its accompanying terrorist, militia, and rebel groups have for years not come anywhere close to the (scale of) brutality ofSunni Islamist extremist groups like ISIS, its al-Qaeda in Iraq precursor, Boko Haram, the Taliban, etc. Hezbollah and the Houthis are not taking sex slaves by the thousands, chopping people’s heads off regularly for internet mass consumption, destroying the world’s great antiquities, or executing civilians and prisoners by thousands. In fact, they seem rather quaint compared with the mass brutality of ISIS and its affiliates. And under Iran’s leadership, Hezbollah has turned from firing its rockets at Israel to firing them at ISIS. In fact, the Iranian military and Hezbollah have put much more of their military might into fighting ISIS than any Sunni-led states surrounding Syria or Iraq have. That is a fact that must be acknowledged, not dismissed. Compared to the Saudi-led Sunni status quo in the region, there are indications that the ascendance of Iran and its Shiite proxies would not only not be worse than, but that such an ascendancy might push the region in some positive, less extreme directions. An Iran eclipsing Saudi Arabia in power and influence, then, may not be a bad thing overall. That in itself says much about the dire depths to which the region has sunk, but it is true nonetheless.

If one wants to contest this, ask this question: would anyone prefer to be captured by ISIS instead of Hezbollah?

*****

Such was the year 2015 that the empowerment of Iran can be seen as a relative positive. As to how 2016 turns out, all of the important trends outlined here will have significant bearing on whether or not there is a more positive feel to 2016.

Honorable mentions: the resilience and growth in power of Russia’s Putin and Turkey’s Erdoğan, despite the fact that they are taking their nationsbackwards and down dangerous paths… democracy in Burma and oh, Canada too! Also, Bibi Netanyahu has been slowly entangling his Israelis—and the Palestinians along with them—into the ditch of conflict and no tow truck is on the horizon, plus security problems in Afghanistan. And, finally, as the world became more dependent on the Internet/mobile devices in 2015, cybersecurity was still lacking for both the private sector and government…

Vogue

Vogue

AP     

Happy(yier?) New Year!(?)

Related article: Happy—Wait, No—Risky New Year

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Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse November 25, 2015   

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) November 25th, 2015

Getty Images

A much shorter version of this piece focusing on Putin’s mentality/political calculus was published by Global Risk Insights. This was also published by by the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC) here and was “Post of the Month” for December/January.

What the Hell Happened?

AMMAN — After weeks of increasing tension between Russia and Turkey, yesterday, Turkey shot down a Russian fighter-bomber jet that Turkey alleges violated its airspace.  The Russian jet had been bombing Turkmen positions/villages—part of a series of Russian bombings in recent days that have targeted Turkmen—on the border area of Turkey and Syria.  Turkey is supporting these Turkmen rebels against Assad that Russia is bombing, and had previously asked Russia not to bomb them.  Turkey also claims it warned the plane ten times before it fired, but Russia denies this.  The alleged violation of Turkey’s airspace comes after several earlier violations and a clear pattern of Russia flagrantly violating NATO and other American allies’ airspace over the past several years, and after clear warnings from Turkey that this behavior would not be tolerated.  The Turkmen who had been bombed by the Russian place killed the pilot, who had ejected from the plan and landed in the Syrian area controlled by the Turkmen.  The plane’s navigator was rescued by Russian and Syrian special forces, but one Russian contract marine was killed in the process and a Russian helicopter was downed as well.

Don’t Expect WWIII Out of This

While this is hardly good news, we should also hardly expect a Russo-Turkish war, a Russian-NATO war, or WWIII in the coming days.  As with the situation in Ukraine, both NATO and Russia should avoid panic.  For one thing, Turkey and Russia have very close economic ties, both in terms of tourism in Turkey and in terms of energy exports from Russia; these ties are very profitable for each nation and for both Putin’s and Erdoğan’s regimes and would not be scrapped lightly over such an incident.  Secondly, and this is something less talked about, Russia and Putin fear NATO greatly; this has been a driving force behind first Soviet and then Russian policy for many decades, as NATO dwarfs Russia both in terms of military and economic power.  It is helpful to think of all of Putin’s posturing, including his airspace violations, and akin to the guy driving the gigantic hummer with huge tires and fire designs spray-painted onto its sides: this is all undertaken to overcompensate for an insecurity.  Putin has been smart to calculate that the U.S. and NATO will not risk a war with Russia over Georgia, Ukraine, or Syria; he is certainly smart enough to not start a war with Turkey and, by consequence, NATO now even after such an incident as this. Putin is not stupid, and he is hardly not in control; the repeated violations of NATO and others’ airspace is unquestioningly a series of deliberate provocations directed by Putin.  Sure, one or two may be an honest mistake by a pilot, but there have been far too many violations by Russia over time that these violations, in general, are no accident.  For the sake of argument, let’s say this one was an accident; Putin still knows he made his own bed with these previous violations, and he knows he has no grounds for starting a serious military confrontation over this as a result.  And deep down, Putin probably respects Erdoğan’s move as a fellow hardball politician: Putin called Turkey’s warning a bluff, but Erdoğan demonstrated he was not bluffing.  This is the language Putin understands.

Putin may be miscalculating here in general, but he is certainly smart enough to know a war with Turkey, and therefore NATO and the West, is not at all in Russia’s interests right now.

Why, Mr. Putin?

AFP

Coming off of all this, many questions arise as to the risk-gain, cost-benefit analysis going on inside Mr. Putin’s head.  One must hope that Mr. Putin’s actions in Syria are not going to continue to be as either myopic or as cynical as the best possible explanations indicate they thus far been. 

On the myopic side, you have Putin thinking that risking the ire of almost all the Sunni governments, Sunni people, and Sunni jihadists by helping Shiite Alawite Assad massacre mainly Sunni rebels and civilians with the help of Shiite Hezbollah and Shiite Iran just for Russia’s having a naval base on Syria’s coast and a few new bases inside Syria as well as a client in Syrian President Bashar al-Assad who accounts for roughly 10% of global Russian arms sales is worth it (oh, and there’s knee-jerk opposing American and Western aims in Syria partly out of spite, from which I would also wonder what Putin thinks he will gain).  Over the longer term, Putin is playing a game to win over the more despotic regimes in the Middle East, letting them know that America may abandon you if you give up all pretense at democratic reform and massacre your own people, but Russia will not (see Putin and Assad as BFFs).  One of the big prizes Russia is eyeing here is Egypt and Hosni Mubarak’s second–(perhaps harsher) coming, Gen. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.  The gamble here is that Egypt’s restive population will tolerate an Egypt aligning itself with Shiite-led Syria, Iran, and Hezbollah and that Egypt’s own explosive and volatile domestic security situation with its own people and an ISIS franchise running amok in the Sinai (one which apparently was able to blow up a Russian airliner) will not be major liabilities.  Egypt has a large population but is mainly devoid of resources that Russia would find useful.  Sure, Russia can increase arms sales to Egypt, but that does not seem to be so great of a prize.  If Putin thinks that the real prize—Saudi Arabia—will be aligning itself with Russia anytime soon, that may have been a possibility without Russia’s forceful backing of Assad and linking up with Iran and Hezbollah, but now that possibility seems as remote as ever even as the U.S. and the Saudis put some distance between them and their relationship cools; a cool relationship with the U.S. still yields a lot more for Saudi Arabia than a new alliance with Russia ever could.  In general, Russia hardly has a strong position in the Middle East; Putin’s desperation to help Assad, his one main ally in the region (it would be a stretch to say that Iran and Russia are general allies even as they are allies in the Syrian Civil War), even at the expense of empowering ISIS, is a reflection of this weakness. And as Putin cozies up to dictators like Assad and Sisi, he risks severely undermining any chance of real long-term gains where he and Russians seek them the most: in Europe.  Democracy-loving Europe will not sit and has not sat idly by while Russia has provoked war and secessionist rebellion in European and democratic Ukraine while fighting against rebels in authoritarian Syria in a way that intensifies the war there. 

Thus, the term myopic is particularly appropriate for Putin’s strategy because his methods of pursuing whatever gains he seeks pose risks that threaten to harm Russia’s interests more than those gains would help them: Russia is particularly vulnerable to Sunni extremist terrorism for a number of clear reasons and its moves in Syria, as I have written before, are only going to expose Russia to further attacks.  If Russia is so concerned with 10% of its arms sales and access to a few military bases in Syria, I am certain the West would work out a deal to ensure these interests are preserved by a new Syrian government if Russia would agree to push for Assad’s ouster, as this would be a reasonable price to pay to see a realistic possibility of an end to this incredibly destructive and lethal war.

On the cynical side, there is the ability for confrontation with the West and Turkey in Syria to help Putin sell his narrative to his own people and the extremist gullible conspiracy-theorists who are intense RT.com and Sputnikconsumers; no doubt the shooting down of a Russian jet by Turkey and the related casualties will galvanize popular support among the Russian people who famously rally behind Putin whenever he is challenged from the outside; thus, provoking a crisis with Turkey and NATO certainly serves to increase Putin’s power at home.  And yet, he is so popular there already, one must either question this as a solid basis for his actions or question the level of paranoia inside the Russia ruler’s mind.  Therefore, it is harder to accept this explanation on its own but we cannot rule it completely out.  Is it some kind of combination of the myopia and the cynicism?  That is a difficult question to answer.  My own gut tells me that to ascribe this mainly to Putin playing a domestic political game seems is quite an intense assumption to make. 

We know that Ukraine and Moldova are prizes Putin has been eyeing, in one form or another, for quite some time, although trying to guess how he will play the European theater and Middle Eastern theater in terms of each other is mainly speculative at this point.  If there is some big move Putin is planning in Europe, it will be interesting to see what it is, but my money is on the idea that Western sanctions (coupled with falling oil prices) have constrained Putin’s behavior there and that this will continue to be the case, even in light of this incident.  Putin hay have been having fun time routinely violating NATO and other American allies’ airspace over the past few years without any serious consequences, but Turkey sure put an end to that, and while I am no fan of Turkey’s President Tayyip Recep Erdoğan for numerous and significant reasons, given Putin’s track record of airspace violations, I am willing to believe that Turkey would not risk shooting down a Russian plane unless it actually did violate Turkish airspace and that the Russian had been warned.

What will be interesting to see is if Putin is now willing to continue to risk the lives of brave Russian pilots to play political chicken with his rivals, and even more interesting will be trying to figure out what he hopes to gain should he pursue such a course. 

And yet, Putin is not the only actor here: Turkey and the U.S. have been flirting with a call for no-fly zones in parts of Syria, including the Turkish-Syrian border; if Russia pushes Turkey and NATO too far, this will only increase the odds of NATO no-fly zones that would severely limit Russia’s freedom of action in Syria and the region.

Time to End the Kabuki Theater Charade and Join the Big Boys on the Main Stage

Perhaps most frustrating of all in this situation is that if Russia actually took a broader, less myopic view of its interests, and actually behaved in a way that matched its deeds with its stated purpose, there is a tremendous amount of room for mutually beneficial cooperation.

See, Russia framed its intervention in Syria as primarily one aimed at striking against ISIS terrorists; then, despite its heroic efforts to dissembleand deceive through the propaganda of its foreign ministry and state-funded media operations RT.com and Sputnik that present contrary “information,” Russia used over 90% of its military strikes to hit non-ISIS, often Western-backed rebels fighting Assad’s regime, strikes most often occurring where ISIS had no presence and not even anywhere near to where ISIS had any presence.  The strikes have even helped ISIS gain more territory at the expense of these other rebel groups.  Strikes like these are the ones that led to the incident yesterday, as Russia was bombing Turkmen who are not fighting for and are nowhere near ISIS.

The New York Times

I get it.  Russia likes Assad, and since ISIS is mainly between Kurdish rebels on one side and non-ISIS other rebels no the other, and that second group of rebels is the group near most of the Syrian regime’s zones of control, it makes some sense for Russia to attack those groups that are more threatening to Assad.  Yet Russia keeps propagandizing these attacks as attacks against ISIS in its public statements.  Sure, Russians inside Russia and avid RT/Sputnik readers might unquestioningly buy up these claims, but the fact is this: Russia is inside Syria to pursue its own war against mainly non-ISIS targets, whatever public relations fantasies it wants to sell.  Few people around the world are buying what Russia wants to sell, so any idea that Russian actions in Syria would buy Russia some goodwill from Europe has been dispelled since Russia is not doing what it claims to be doing.

Institute for the Study of War

It Putin was smarter, he’d shift gears.  The thing is, not too long ago it seems an ISIS affiliate blew up a Russian airliner killing 224 people, almost all of them Russians.  ISIS has fertile ground in and around Russia to recruit terrorists and carry out attacks against Russians.  It is manifestly in Russia’s interests to join the current anti-ISIS coalition and to focus on ISIS now, not the other rebels, as even with its small percentage of attacks being against ISIS, Russia has still become a object of ISIS’s wrath.  If Russia were to at least mostly suspend its campaign against non-ISIS rebels and cooperate with the U.S., France, Turkey, and others against ISIS, it would win a tremendous amount of goodwill from the West, which would welcome a helping hand.  Instead, blatantly lying about targeting ISIS, bombing rebels that are allies with Western powers and Turkey, and violating Turkey’s airspace will do nothing to improve relations with the wider world, reduce crippling economic sanctions, or combat the jihadist threat now facing Russians all over the world.  If we could truly join together in common purpose in Syria—ending the war and seeing Assad step aside, and all with the support of Russia—it is difficult to imagine that the West would not work to preserve Russia’s currently existing interests in Syria in exchange for their support and the end of their intransigence.

But if Putin wants to turn everything into a he said/she said contestbetween the Western media and RT/Sputnik (a tactic that has not worked in Ukraine and is not working in Syria), if Putin wants to keep his attention focused away from ISIS even though ISIS has now killed many Russian civilians, Putin only leaves himself and his nation more isolated, more weak, more vulnerable.  The old playbook of being against the West for the sake of being against the West is not going to work.  Putin has already gained a lot in Ukraine by annexing Crimea; he has shown that if his interests are not considered in a final settlement in Syria that he is prepared to use military means to secure them; if Putin would just deescalate in Ukraine and start focusing on ISIS in Syria, there is a very real chance that both sanctions relief could be on the table and that a final peace deal that removes Assad would see Russian strategic and arms trade interests preserved.  Yet if he continues down his current path, he risks destroying important relationships with Turkey and Europe, increased sanctions, a future Syria that will do everything it can to expel Russian influence and a Russian presence, more dead Russian military personnel through incidents like the one yesterday, and more dead Russian civilians from terrorist attacks in a war that will not end anytime soon and keeps empowering ISIS, in part thanks to Russia’s actions in Syria.

The choice is clear for Mr. Putin: stop the charade and begin real cooperation with the NATO and other powers against ISIS, or go down a much more difficult path of pain, confrontation, and isolation.  Russia could have taken former approach some time ago, and avoided yesterday’s regrettable incident.  Even now Russia just made clear it will keep bombing the Turkmen, but it does not have to be this way.  To Putin we must say, there is another way, and not everything needs to be zero-sum.  Whether he listens, well, that is up to him.

If you think your site or another would be a good place for this content please do not hesitate to reach out to me! Please feel free to share and repost on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow me there at@bfry1981)

Contrary to critics, the decision of Obama’s to deploy Special Operations troops to Syria is neither a giant step forward into a quagmire nor a meaningless symbolic gesture.  In fact, as far as bang-for-the-buck analysis, Obama (again) demonstrates his ability to minimize risk and maximize benefit.

Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse November 3, 2015  

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) November 3rd, 2015

U.S. Army

This is a version of an article published by Global Risk Insights, republished with permission here and also published by Business Insider andStupidparty Math v. Myth

AMMAN — President Obama’s recent decision to deploy a small number (“fewer than 50”) of Special Operations troops to Syria is certainly raising quite a lot of discussion.  To the president’s left, cries of “mission creep,” “escalation,” and “quagmire” are raising the specter of wider war and American military misadventures past and present.  To his right, the criticism is that this is “too little too late,” a move of timidity and weakness that diminishes the presidency and America.  Talk of “Golidocks” and “just right” may be presumptuous, but there is little reason to panic and every reason to think that this move on the part of Obama—whose foreign policy (particularly regarding Syria) has been characterized by risk aversion and caution more than any president in recent memory—will continue his trend of finding shrewd ways to increase America’s effectiveness and impact while only exposing American interests and personnel to minimal risks, in line with his recent decision to robustly supply non-ISIS rebels with tank-busting TOW missiles.

As of now, the mission for these several dozen Special Operations troops is not to engage in combat alongside rebels but to train, advise, and assist.  To start, they will be deployed at a single headquarters location for the opposition in northern Syria, away from where Russian jets have been bombing targets, though officials acknowledged that this limited geographic scope could very well change in the future.  This means that most of the American troops’ efforts—and possibly all—will initially be collaborating with Syria’s Kurdish forces, who control most of Syria’s northernmost regions and whose zones of control border ISIS—not Syrian government—zones.  Thus, for now, the U.S. troops will be focusing their efforts on anti-ISIS operations, not anti-Assad ones, and officials have framed the deployment as a move against ISIS.  The deployment to this region, which borders Turkey, will also likely act as a check on the increasing hostilities between Turkey and the Kurds, as having U.S. forces embedded there will limit Turkey’s ability to strike freely.  This will be welcome, as it seems that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has used recent terrorist attacks as an excuse to go after Kurds in Turkey, Syria, and Iraq, especially after the main Kurdish political party in Turkey dealt him a major electoral setback in a recent election, despite the fact that his own investigators say ISIS, not Kurds, are the likely culprit (in any event, Erdogan’s cynical approach seems to have won: his party won enough seats to govern alone, while the Kurdish party lost a bit, in a new election held just days ago).  Finally, U.S. Special Operations troops in Syria’s north will make it easier to begin implementing any eventual safe havens for civilians and/or no-fly zones.

Republican hawks making noise that borders on warmongering and whose ideas consist of exposing American troops to high-risk situations unnecessarily while removing the burden of regional actors to clean upmesses in their own backyard seem to lack an appreciation of just how effective even small numbers of Special Operations forces can be.  Those on the left, meanwhile, who cry foul and see Vietnam and Iraq over their shoulder and accuse Obama of warmongering are not recognizing how severely limited this deployment is. 

Split into very small groups or even as individuals, Special Operations troops will be able to support dozens of allied rebel units and dramatically increase their effectiveness.  With even just one troop embedded with an entire rebel unit of hundreds—perhaps even more—of fighters, those fighters and their commanders now have some of the most valuable assets in the world: a direct line to the intelligence of the U.S. government and to American warplanes and those of its coalition partners.  State of the art technology means single operative can be able to relay critical information form the broadest and deepest intelligence community the world has ever seen.  This drastically improves these rebel units’ ability to keep their own people safe, stay well supplied, find more opportune targets under less risky conditions, and generally stay one step ahead of ISIS (and potentially other) forces eager to destroy them; conversely, this setup also makes all those enemies of the rebels far more vulnerable, either opening them up to more devastating attacks or confining their freedom of action.  These are no small advantages in a war as tangled, convoluted, and capriciously see-sawas this one.  Finally, the rebels will have the advantages of being trained by some of the most professional, talented, vetted, and well-equipped personnel within the entire U.S. Military.

Sure, in addition to ISIS, the rebels still face a daunting alliance of Syria’s government forces, Iranian and Russian forces, and the near-army like militia of Lebanon’s Hezbollah.  And yet, the rebels having the advantage of being tapped into the U.S. intelligence community combined with the benefits of having U.S. military personnel embedded with them on the ground training them and being able to relay U.S. intelligence in real time before, during, and after operations, all the while also being armed by the U.S. with advanced anti-tank missiles, put the rebels in a relatively better position than before.  In addition, the quality of U.S. intelligence will also improve with as many as dozens of on-the-ground American military sources of local intelligence in various locations with various units inside Syria, which will mean even better information going to the rebels in a kind of positive feedback loop, making the rebels a much more formidable force that acts and reacts with far more access the big picture than ever before.

Any subsequent American leader will hardly find him/herself constrained in either escalating or ending involvement as a result of Obama’s limited deployment.  With this deployment, the U.S. gains better intelligence, will see its allies perform better, will see its influence increased, and will place a check on rising hostilities between Turkey and the Kurds, both allies of America.   The biggest risk involved is a small number of casualties, yet Special Operations troops by definition sign up for missions that are far more risky and dangerous than normal missions but are also better trained to handle them, and the possibility that a large number of them become casualties is quite remote indeed.  After President Bush’s “Go Big, Lose Big” approach, perhaps people should appreciate Obama’s “Go Small, Win Small-to-to-Medium” approach.

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 (Russian/Русский перевод/Arabic/ الترجمة العربية ) By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) October 2nd, 2015; Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse October 2, 2015; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023, but I still need your help, please keep sharing my work and consider also donating! Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion. Also, Brian is running for U.S. Senate for Maryland and you can learn about his campaign here.

This piece has also been published by the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC) and was its Post of the Month for Oct/Nov

AMMAN — Anyone who’s been paying attention to the Syrian vortex of death, and Russia’s role in this vortex, knows that Putin’s motivations are not terribly difficult to understand and are, in fact, obvious.  They generally run on three levels:

1.) Preserve the regime of Bashar al-Assad, since that regime

a.) hosts Russia’s only military base outside the states of the former Soviet Union in the form of a naval facility in Syria’s port of Tartus, without which Russia cannot be considered a global power, just a regional one (Syria has just given Russia at least one military facility, an airbase at Latakia, and maybe even more)

b.) is a customer accounting for roughly 10% of Russia’s global arms sales

2.) Stick it to the U.S. by challenging U.S. policy in a vengeful and forceful way unlikely to be matched by the U.S. that makes Russians feel good about projecting strength as the expense of their main rival

3.) Use this action to rehabilitate and increase Russia’s global power by

a.) framing the intervention as Russia taking a responsible and leading role in combating ISIS and preserving state sovereignty/the world order; this in turn can hopefully

b.) Relieve pressure/sanctions regarding Russian actions in Ukraine

c.) show regional dictators in the Middle East that, unlike the U.S., Russia will not be a fair-weather-friend even if virtually your entire country rises up against you and you slaughter well over 100,000 of your own people (Assad’s government forces have killed more Syrians than ISIS by far); this may possibly help Russia gain more allies in the region and/or spark the realignment of some nations towards Russia

Nothing complicated here.

2.) and 3.) are pretty abstract and mostly long-term in nature. So 1.) is the only thing that is likely to give Russia any actual benefits in the short term. The real question that needs to be asked is this:

Is 10% of Russian arm sales and the use of one or more military bases in Syria over the long term worth the risks of Russian intervention?

I am not sure if Putin has even seriously considered what he is getting into, or the wider risks.

In his recent speech for the UN general assembly, Putin questioned whether the U.S. was learning from the mistakes of history, including those of the Soviet Union’s.

Of Mr. Putin, we may ask: is he? Is Russia?

Whatever you think of Putin’s intervention in Ukraine, there is not likely to be any serious additional material consequences, other than the existing sanctions, which will be lifted in time. Russia and its people have clearly shown that they will put up stoically with the sanctions and blame them on the West rather than back down from their aggressive nationalism binge. There are few long-term risks for Russia’s position in Ukraine; they have the support of a significant minority in Ukraine (even a majority in many of the parts in which they are operating).  It’s not like all of Catholic Europe will be sending holy warriors in a crusade to fight Orthodox Russia’s attempts to annex the ethnic Russian, Orthodox Christian sections of Ukraine.

Which brings us to the Middle East, and Syria. Perhaps you’ve heard of a place called Afghanistan? Perhaps you are familiar with the fact that when Russia invaded Afghanistan in a heavy-handed campaign, pretty much the whole Muslim world rose to condemn Russia’s invasion and many supported a globalized jihad that drove Russia out after the a long, fruitless, bloody war that killed about 14,500 Russians and likely well over one million Afghans, a war that lasted through most of the 1980s and precipitated the fall of the Berlin Wall and then the entire Soviet Union.

As far as who learns from history, for now, the U.S. has a president in office now who campaigned on the fact that invading Iraq in 2003 was a colossal mistake, who, keeping this in mind, intervened only lightly in Libya and went out of his way to avoid being entangled in Syria. Meanwhile, Russia is placing a significant (though not huge) presence on the ground in Syria and we can only expect this to grow.

Russia may think it can accomplish the propping up of Assad with only a light presence. However 1.) this presence needs to be strong enough to potentially counter other rival forces in the region, e.g., US/West/Turkey/NATO and regional Arab states. Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton just recently called for a no-fly zone in Syria (as have I in the past) and she is not alone; Russia’s presence there is far too minimal to prevent this, which may actually incentivize a larger and more rapid buildup of Russian forces in order to make a Western-no-fly zone all but impossible.

Enter the jihad factor. Muslims have their heroes and villains. In the 1980s, the heroes were the jihadists in a fight against the villains in the form of godless Russian/Soviet communists invading Afghanistan; in the 1990s, to a much lesser degree, the villains were the post-Soviet Russians invading Chechnya and the Christians (Orthodox Serb and Catholic Croat) attacking Muslim Bosnians in the Balkans; in the last decade, the villains were the imperialist Americans in Iraq and their allies in the “apostate” Shiite regimes there. The two big culminations of these efforts in Iraq were in 2006, when Iraq nearly erupted into full-scale civil war, and in 2014, when ISIS nearly marched on Baghdad after taking much of the country from Maliki’s sectarian Shiite regime. Now, for the past few years, the big magnet for idealistic Muslims willing to use violence in the form of jihad has been the Assad regime: though secular in ideology (Ba’athist), it is headed by Arab Alawite (a sect of Shiite Islam that is a small minority in Syria) Bashar al-Assad and is controlled mainly by Alawate Shiites. It is backed by Shiite Persian Iranians and the Arab Shiite Lebanese militia Hezbollah. Sunni Muslims, in general, do not like Shiites, and that is an understatement; many Sunnis do not even consider Shiites to be Muslims. That is why so much money from rich Gulf countries like Saudi Arabia and Qatar is going to fund, train, arm, and equip Sunni jihadist extremists like ISIS to go fight Assad’s regime, and this has been the case for a while now. It is part of the reason why the Syrian Civil War is so deadly, so intractable, and so long; it is about so much more than just Syria when you throw the age-old Sunni-Shiite sectarian rivalries into the mix, which have been red-hot since the Lebanese Civil War, continuing through the Iranian Revolution and the Iran-Iraq War, through the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and now through conflict in Yemen and Syria.

Recruits are coming from all over the world—even young girls from the West—to join ISIS in Syria (some 30,000 over the past few years, according to a recent major report). Some of the older people involved in this will have been veterans of the conflicts in Afghanistan, Chechnya, and Iraq. All of those conflicts lasted about a decade; almost none of these guys quit easily. Some of them will have personal hatred of the Russians to bring to bear from one or more of these past wars. They can instill this in a younger generation.   Some are even fighting today against Russia in, of all places, Ukraine.

See, here’s the thing: with Russia clearly siding with Shiite Alawite Assad and Iran against Sunnis, now more clearly than ever with the activities of the past week, there will be greater incentive for Islamic jihad against Russia than at any point since the 1980s. But the game has changed; it’s much more easier for these things now to go global, to hit home. The Chechens showed that the Russian home front was quite vulnerable in a series of horrific attacks over the years of their conflict. And unlike int he 1980s, you have many young Muslim men in Europe, part of a growing population, who are marginalized and angry; quite recently we have been seeing lone-wolf and small scale attacks flaring up in Europe, most notably with the Charlie Hebdo attack. Many of these young radicalized men are going to Syria; it won’t take much effort, if Russia is really seen as the new enemy, for people to sneak into next-door Ukraine or a little further into Russia itself. This restive population includes hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees now, most of whom will have legitimate gripes against Russia. Russia itself has a significant and growing Muslim minority that is often not treated well, which just increased to include thousands of Crimean Tatars in the illegally-annexed Crimea, taken from Ukraine by Russia just last year.  And Russia is not the superpower superstate that inspires mass fear in its own population is was in the 1980s, able to control the media at home and limit what information its own Muslim population will see, whose religious practice and freedom were heavily repressed anyway.  Then, Russia could clearly plan for a war in Afghanistan and not worry about sympathetic Muslims in its own population; before Glasnostand Perestroika encouraged open discussion and debate, it was keep your head down and be quiet or be arrested.  While Russia is certainly no bastion of free press and free expression today, it still has a far more permissive atmosphere for troublemakers today than it did then.  In the Middle East, if migrants can make their way as far as Europe illegally, jihadists will certainly be able to make their way to Russia, if Russia gives them enough motivation. However Russia frames this conflict, convincing many of the myopic RT.com crowd, most Sunni Muslims—and therefore the vast majority of Muslims—will see this as Russia supporting Shiites against Sunnis, supporting the government against civilians.

Imagine what the mujahideen jihadists of 1980s Afghanistan could have done with modern technology, using the internet and mobile communications to organize and recruit to an even higher degree, use the less-restricted travel and borders of the post-Cold War era to get to Afghanistan and even Russia with much greater ease.

Russia needs to imagine this, and consider all of these factors. If Russia pursues major escalation in this conflict on the side of Assad, Putin and his people may soon be facing one of the great anti-Western jihads of Islamic history, and they might even not even know it.  Are 10% of Russian arms sales and a few military bases—themselves obvious targets—worth the risk of a global anti-Russian jihad? Probably nyet.

See related article by same author, Grading Obama’s Middle East Strategy II: Syria’s Civil War

© 2015-2024 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Also see Brian’s eBook, A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia, or, Ukrainegate: A “New” Phase in the Trump-Russia Saga Made from Recycled Materials, available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook (preview here).

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Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse August 3, 2015 

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) August 3rd, 2015

Reuters

This piece has also been published by the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC).

Those who argue that the Obama Administration’s overall Middle East strategy is a total failure have no sense of strategy themselves and dangerously substitute tactical-here-and-nows and pointless posturing for real strategy (especially Republicans). That’s not to say some of the Obama Administration’s Middle East policies aren’t lacking, but overall the Administration has more progress and sound approaches to point to than failures and mismanagement. Below, all of the Obama Administration’s major Middle East policies are broken down and given a letter grade. Here, then, is a look at all the major efforts of the Obama Administration in the Middle East, and as it covers a lot of territory this has been broken up into three parts, this being Part II and covering the Syrian Civil War.

Other articles in this series:

Grading Obama’s Middle East Strategy (Sensibly): Part I

4.) Dealing with Syria’s Civil War

AMMAN — Amidst a sea of Middle Eastern conflicts, the civil war raging in Syria is currently the largest and deadliest. Here, as in other situations, we have a crisis in which we must be careful not to blame Obama too much but must also note the missed opportunities where his substantive leadership could have made a huge difference, though not without some risk involved. So, right from the start, it must be acknowledged both that America could have done a lot more in regards to Syria, potentially helping to dramatically lessen the violence and perhaps even ending the war on the one hand, but, on the other, that America bears little responsibility for causing or contributing to the overall Syrian tragedy.

First, let’s examine the history of this war and the Obama Administration’s response to it, starting from the very beginning.

Of Arms and Assad I Sing

REUTERS/Mahmoud Hassano

Once upon a time in 2011, there was an uprising in Syria of many of the country’s own people who wanted Syria’s President (dictator) Bashar al-Assad to step down so they could change the system and have more freedom. They were inspired by their Arab brethren in the happier days of the Arab Spring in 2011. This was, generally, a struggle for freedom, representation, human rights, and democracy in a country ruled by an authoritarian, repressive, undemocratic Syrian regime with an Alawite (a word describing a subsect of Shia Islam that is only roughly 12% of Syria’s population) ruling family and many other Alawites at the top, ruling over mostly Sunni Muslims, though the regime and its supporters are by no means exclusively Alawite. While in 2011, people power brought down long-ruling autocrats in Tunisia, Egypt, and Yemen, and American-led NATO intervention rescued a revolution in Libya from massacre and disaster and helped overthrow Libya’s dictator, Muammar el-Qaddafi, Syria had no such luck with its people power or Western intervention. Qaddafi, alone and isolated and ruling over a far smaller population, was a relatively easy target. Compared to Qaddafi’s regime, Assad’s military was much stronger and, unlike Qaddafi’s, had strong patrons in Russia and Iran who would complicate and increase the costs of any Western intervention and made the prospects of any success for the Syrian people on their own quite dim.

Some powers talked of intervening in Syria, but with the U.S. signaling no appetite for direct military involvement, no other Western governments put their militaries in action against the Assad regime, nor did any regional governments. Still, Obama did call for Assad to step down in August 2011, and moved to increase sanctions and economic pressure on the regime at the same time. There was also a robust debate within the Obama administration about arming the Syrian rebels. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, then-CIA chief and later Gates’ successor Leon Panetta, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (also former president Bill Clinton) all agreed on arming significant numbers of moderate Syrian rebels, but they were unable to persuade President Obama in the end. If moderate rebels had been robustly supported early in the conflict, when an increasing stream of Syrian Army officers(including generals) and soldiers were defecting to the rebel cause, perhaps the regime could have been brought to its knees and would have been willing to enter serious negotiations; perhaps Assad would have been willing to leave if given immunity. The U.S. and West could have made a huge difference in the conflict with direct intervention by degrading the Assad regime’s military capabilities and limiting the shipments of weapons into Syria with a combination of naval blockades, no-fly-zones, and the U.S. specifically partnering with its allies Iraq and (NATO member) Turkey to use drones, reconnaissance flights, and other high-tech monitoring equipment to lock down Syria’s land borders with both nations. NATO could have played a significant role in such an operation, too, not terribly dissimilar to its role in the operation in Libya.

Karam Al-Masri/AFP/Getty Images

But no serious action was taken along these lines and in this absence of action, into the fray came Islamist extremist jihadists—including ISIS—even more murderous than Assad’s thugs. Suddenly, the moderate homegrown Syrian revolutionary rebels, who were having a difficult enough time holding their own with little international support against Assad’s well-and-Russian-armed forces, found themselves having to compete with and also fight well-armed, well-funded foreign jihadist extremists. Many of the moderate rebels lost heart and quit; still others defected to the more successful and more robustly-backed Islamists. At the same time, other Shiites were coming to the aid of Assad’s Shiite Alawite-led regime: the Iranian government was sending some of its elite military units and leaders, while Lebanese Hezbollah’s well-trained militia forces were also coming and making a big difference in favor of Assad at this time, each supporting and fighting for Assad on Syrian soil.

Instead of being supported by the international community and slowly and surely gaining territory, credibility, and influence, the Syrian moderates were themselves losing territory, credibility, and influence to the better-supported Islamists and their more extreme tactics. Almost all the factions became more radicalized, more violent. A major attack in July 2012 in Damascus that killed top regime insiders, including the defense minister and Assad’s brother-in-law—still the most spectacular attack to date carried out against the regime—was claimed by both moderate and extremist rebels, with some noting evidence that pointed to Islamists, and still others saying it was an inside job of the regime itself.

Narciso Contreras, Associated Press

Whoever carried it out, after this bombing, the conflict became even more deadly and brutal in Syria, with both 2012 and 2013 each seeing extreme escalations in violence and lethality. Foreign Shiite militias joined the Iranian government’s and Lebanese Hezbollah’s well-trained militia forces (both Shiite as well) already aiding and fighting for Assad in Syria. As the situation kept deteriorating, at some points in 2012 the CIA began helping U.S. allies Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar vet and identify rebels moderate enough to recommend them for military support and Obama secretly authorized both covert non-lethal support from the U.S. for some Syrian rebels and a program to militarily train some of them, too, though these efforts were to be very limited in nature; even when they were “sharply increased” early and later in 2013, respectively, the programs had been so small to begin with that they still remained very limited.  Obama also politically recognized Syria’s main opposition group (the Syrian Opposition/National Coalition) at the end of 2012, though without recognizing it as the legitimate government of Syria. But when the rebels suffered serious losses, in the middle of 2013 the Obama Administration and select Congressional Committees finally decided to have America itself arm Syrian rebels with “lethal military aid,” allowing the CIA to arm vetted Syrian rebels directly (though not with any advanced or heavy weaponry), and those weapons finally began to be delivered at the very end of the summer of 2013.

As the conflict continued to worsen and concerns about Assad’s chemical weapons of mass destruction (WMD) program—one of the largest in the world—were raised, Obama even repeatedly and publicly warned Assad that if his regime was found to be readying or using “a whole bunch” of chemical weapons that this would constitute a “red line” that would mean a severe response from the U.S., even possibly including military action. Throughout this period, rumors and reports of the use of chemical weapons use began to trickle out of Syria, culminating in the summer of 2013 with reports of a massive chemical WMD sarin gas attack—the largest chemical attack in the world in a quarter-century since Saddam Hussein gassed Iraqi Kurds in 1988—near Damascus. Unlike previous reports, these highlighted an attack that was both of an unprecedented scale for this conflict—it killed about 1,400 people—and confirmed publicly by several major Western governments (including that of the United States), Human Rights Watch, and later by the United Nations. As to who was the culprit, as I pointed out at the time, the signs clearly pointed to elements of the Assad regime carrying out the attack.

To Strike or Not to Strike, That Was the Question

Horrified by the attack and seeing this “red line” crossed with impunity, first Kerry and then Obama made an impassioned case to the American people that a military response against Assad’s regime was both necessary and proper and began to move the machinery of the American government and its allies towards this end. Yet the American people, weary of war after the disasters of the (W.) Bush Administration, began to see Obama’s moves to engage in limited strikes in Syria as all too similar to Bush’s moves to invade Iraq; they failed to see, as I myself made clear, that Syria 2013 was not Iraq 2003, and that Obama is not Bush, for despite the support of both the top Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives, Speaker of the House John Boehner, and the top Democrat in the same body, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, few others of either party in Congress emerged to support Obama’s plan to strike Assad’s regime and far more came out against it. Even as opposition began growing at home, the House of Commons of the British Parliament shockingly rejected Prime Minister David Cameron’s motion to support pending American strikes and then Cameron himself stated he would respect the vote and not join the U.S.were it to initiate strikes against Assad’s regime. Soon after this setback, opposition to the Obama Administration’s plans for military strikes gained traction very quickly both at home and abroad.

With Obama himself never too eager to intervene militarily and with both his own party and America’s most stalwart foreign ally for military interventions uncharacteristically declining to join the fray, Obama publicly announced he would seek Congressional approval. In some ways, this could be considered a welcome move, coming after the Bush Administration often showed little more than contempt for opposition sentiment in Congress after the early months of near unquestioning-support from much of Congress just after the September 11th attacks faded to the more acrimonious, partisan atmosphere that characterized the end of Bush’s first term and all of his second (this poisonous political atmosphere only got worse after Obama was elected). Furthermore, if Obama was able to muster Congressional support, it would empower him that much more in the public and political senses. And yet, Obama’s putting so much power and influence in the hands of Congress on so crucial an action showed that he had learned almost nothing at all from his previous interactions with Congress, whether with insecure Democrats nervous about retaining their seats or with an implacable Tea Party-driven Republican majority in the House that was determined to avoid cooperation with the president at nearly all costs. To allow Congress to vote against his plan was to invite it to be weakened and to drive any international support to significantly lower levels, if not destroying it entirely. That President Obama did not realize that this outcome was far more likely from the beginning reveals a remarkable naïveté for a president in his second term dealing with factions that had more than established who they were and how they would behave. Never mind that Obama was perfectly within his Constitutional and legal rights to do so, and that there are ample precedents in American history dating back to the Administrations of Presidents Adams (for military action short of war) and Jefferson (for military action overseas without Congressional authorization), our second and third presidents, respectively, because being undermined in such a serious way politically would itself carry grave real-world consequences.

Obama’s s attempt to rally support failed miserably, as in the days that followed public opposition in the U.S. became widespread, vocal, and bipartisan. Obama’s idealistic attempt to engage the elected representatives of the people weakened his position considerably, for, despite some support from the most relevant Committees in Congress, the overall trends in both the House and the Senate showed that the Obama Administration had little to no chance of either the full House of the full Senate passing a resolution either approving or authorizing military action in Syria against Assad. Basically, instead of leading decisively, Obama decided to say “wait, let’s have a discussion” at this critical juncture after there had already been weeks of mulling over what to do, preferring to pass at least some of the responsibility and maybe even some of the authority from the Executive Branch to the Legislative Branch. Even the rebels and the government in Syria both strangely united in questioning this move of Obama’s. Again, such an action is one that works better in the abstract than in practice, and it was at such a juncture, with the very presidency stalling and losing altitude on such a critical military issue, that Russia and Vladimir Putin waded into the fray, seizing on a single comment by Secretary of State John Kerry—that Assad could avoid strikes if he gave up his chemical WMD—to propose a plan facilitate just that. This was, to use my own label, after Russia’s long stint as the obstructionist Tea Party of international politics and also after Putin’s farcical, blithely hypocritical New York Times op-ed calling for a diplomatic, non-violent solution even though, less than a year later, he sent Russian troops pouring into Ukraine, when violence as a means suited his ends there, and did the same five years earlier in Georgia. Still, while virtually anything that would significantly reduce Assad’s WMD stockpile has to be objectively seen as a positive, on one level the ensuing deal left Obama and the U.S presidency significantly emasculated. On another level, it was clear that the threat of U.S. strikes was the only thing that prodded Russia into doing anything that was either significant or productive in relation to this conflict. And yet, as I wrote at the time, on another, grander level, Putin’s move was entirely in his self-interest, as the deal itself was something of an insurance policy he took out on Assad’s regime, a significant ally of Russia’s that was both a major buyer of Russian arms and the host of Russia’s only military base outside of the former Soviet Union.

In any event, after Obama declined to strike the Assad regime and Russia’s proposal—which had become the UN’s—was accepted by Syria, seeing Syria’s 1,300 tons of declared chemical weapons painstakingly removed from Syria (there is now, disturbingly, new evidence that Assad may have kept some undeclared top-grade chemical WMD hidden from inspectors to be used in more desperate times), what I predicted—that this would do nothing to stem the drivers of the conflict and that the war in Syria would only continue and continue to get worse like some sort of vortex—came to pass, with 2014 being the deadliest year of the conflict thus far and no end in sight. Now, Syria truly is a vortex, becoming inflated and conflated with so many other conflicts that it has metastasized into one big megaconflict. Syria’s neighbors, as I predicted in the fall of 2013, are also suffering from an increasingly destabilizing burden as a result of the conflict—none more so than Iraq as ISIS broke off from al-Qaeda and proceeded to shock the world with its march from Syria into Iraq in 2014—and the more than four million registered refugees it has produced.

UNHCR

Still, as mentioned, even before the chemical weapons attacks, the Obama Administration had signaled and had taken steps—albeit very miniscule ones—to support rebels fighting to overthrow Assad’s regime. Yet, in addition to Obama’s natural caution and the lack of political and public support for robust involvement in Syria, a classified 2012-2013 CIA study found very little success with past CIA covert armings of rebel groups in various conflicts over nearly seventy years unless Americans were on the ground working with rebels where they were fighting (something the Obama Administration was clear it wanted to avoid at the time); this means that even up through the publishing of this article at the beginning of August 2015, the Administration’s anti-Assad efforts when it comes to supporting rebels actively fighting against Assad have been half-hearted, tepid, and ineffective at best. As the CIA training program for vetted moderate rebels encountered difficulties, stalled, produced limited results, and is now having a significant part of its funding cut, the Obama Administration began to shift responsibility to the U.S. Military by giving it a new program to train Syrian rebels; but whereas the CIA program was concocted to produce forces to fight Assad’s regime, the U.S. Military’s program will focus on producing fighters to go after ISIS. Obama asked Congress to approve $500 million in funding for the new program in the summer of 2014, and by the end of the year, Congress had approved an over $720 million package for the program, demonstrating both the shift in the U.S. view from Assad to ISIS as the major threat and the seriousness with which ISIS was being viewed (Assad may even be playing into this shift by deliberately aiding ISIS in an effort to empower the terrorist group as a way to further deflect Western attention away from itself to ISIS and stoke further fears of what would happen should the Assad regime fall, making leaders more reluctant to push for his ouster). The military training program began this spring, but as of early July had only managed to train less than sixty rebels, a paltry figure by any standards. To make matters worse, even before the end of July, al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria and ISIS rival, Jabhat al-Nusra/the Nusra Front, had embarrassingly captured one of the U.S-trained-rebels’ senior commanders and his deputy and then later attacked the U.S.-trained rebel group.  Another embarrassing development is that the Assad regime has been resorting to the regular use of makeshift chemical weapons—the regime’s infamous barrel bombs with chlorine gas added to their payload—against civilians. While these more improvised chlorine chemical weapons do not reach the level of lethality of the WMD attack from the summer of 2013 (an attack that multiple investigations confirmed involved highly-deadly sarin gas), the blatant and repeated violation of the international norm against the use of chemical weapons without any serious consequences is a development that begs their future use by both Assad’s regime and others who share its lack of concern for international norms and human life.

Additionally, just over the past week, after Turkey’s long opposition to Assad by way of supporting Islamist extremists—including, at least tacitly (and sometimes more directly), ISIS and the al-Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front—backfired recently with the worst terrorist attack in Turkey against civilians in years and carried out by a Turkish citizen with reported tied to ISIS, there is, apparently, a new level of cooperation between Turkey and the United States, including plans to establish a “safe zone” corridor in Syria along the country’s border with Turkey using American air power and both Turkish and rebel ground forces. The plan reportedly calls for ISIS to be cleared from a zone inside Syria extending sixty miles from Turkey’s border and which would also serve as a safe haven for civilians, though U.S. officials later denied such a plan has been agreed upon. I called for at least a similar robust corridor back in the fall of 2013 as a starting point from which moderate rebels, supported by the West, could further expand control and as one of the only realistic ways for an intervention to have an impact on driving down the drivers of conflict and moving in any way towards an end to the Syrian Civil war and the mass killing associated with it (as neither Assad’s chemical weapons nor ISIS are the reasons behind the Syrian Civil War and its perpetuation). However, it remains to be seen if this talk will turn into action and enough of such action to make a real difference. Especially with Obama close to leaving office and an election season well underway, there are reasons to doubt this safe corridor will actually come into being anytime soon if at all, at least in a significant way. Then again, Obama has shown a boldness and a willingness to take the risks required for big payoffs in recent months, most especially with Cuba and Iran, so such talk should also not be immediately written off. Furthermore, there is at least a chance that the recent agreement with Iran will spur further cooperation between Iran and the United States, with Syria perhaps being the most pressing and obvious case for such cooperation apart from the problem of ISIS. Only time will tell, especially given the conflicting messages coming out of media and official sources. But if some sort of a safe-zone is established by two (or more) NATO countries like the U.S. and Turkey, it could be a game changer for Assad, and not to his benefit. If such action expands, the successful NATO air-war in Kosovo could be seen as something of a loose blueprint. A Syria free of Assad and with ISIS tamed could be a starting point for peace and a new future for the Syrian people. What is happening now is a starting point for nothing but death and destruction.

While the U.S. may be significantly and substantively stepping up the fight against ISIS in Syria, having now been directly striking ISIS targets inside Syria with a respectable-sized coalition of air power for some time (and reportedly maybe indirectly communicating with Assad’s regime about those strikes), and while talk of creating a humanitarian corridor is certainly welcome, even allowing for those developments, there is very little of substance the U.S. has done to stem the long-term drivers of the Syrian Civil War and thus, very little it has done little to bring about an end to this conflict and a stop to the mass killing involved with it. As peace talks pushed by the U.S. between the regime and the opposition, each with goals wholly incompatible to the other, have accomplished nothing and seem all but certain to go nowhere for the foreseeable future, the focus on ISIS and on chemical weapons has obscured the fact that the Assad regime and the war in general slaughters civilians on a mass scale and that little has been done to stop this by anyone.

Bold “What Ifs” vs. “Do No Harm”

Having traced the Syrian Civil War from its inception through now and the U.S. role (or lack thereof) in it during this same period, how the U.S. could even be judged or graded on its involvement must also be discussed.

Since the United States: 1.) was not, an occupying power in Syria—like France was was from the end of WWI through 1946—and bears no serious responsibility for the initial homegrown protests in Syria that prompted a brutal, murderous government response that, in turn, provoked an uprising which led to the Syrian Civil War, 2.) was not even not the among first Western nations formally recognizing the opposition, 3.) has been very lightly involved compared with other major international meddlers in this conflict (e.g. Russia, Iran, Hezbollah, the Gulf states…), and 4.) since the overall post-2003 Iraq mess, for which the U.S. does bear a majority of overall responsibility, was actually at its best levels of security all throughout the first two years of the protests/fighting in Syria, we cannot even begin to argue that the U.S. destabilizing Iraq is one of the major reasons why the Syrian Civil War got so out of control. If anything, the situation in Syria eventually did much more to destabilize Iraq than the other way around. That is no to say that our actions in Libya (which will be discussed in Part III) did not possibly serve to foster a hope within dissident Syrians that the U.S./NATO/the West would intervene on their behalf, but using that possibility to assign major blame to the U.S. for Syria’s conflict falls far short of a logical conclusion.

Reuters/Muzaffar Salman

However, as demonstrated, the U.S. had major opportunities to help make major differences and assist the Syrian people and their homegrown revolutionaries in overthrowing Assad. This the U.S. (and the world) declined to do, except in only very minor ways and quite belatedly, making the war in Syria a heavyweight fight between Ba’athist authoritarianism and jihadist theocracy, with the local Syrian moderates being left to waste away in the face of multiple competing factions and multiple threats. As in otherrelatively recent situations of mass killing (e.g., Rwanda, Bosnia, the Congo, the ongoing genocide in Darfur), it is disappointing that, absent U.S. leadership, no other nation stepped up to lead and significantly help the people (in this case local, moderate rebels), and that so many people have, are, and will continue to die as a result, so the blame for inaction on Syria is hardly on the U.S. alone. But especially after Obama’s waffling and inaction on his chemical weapons “red line” (a true low point of Obama’s presidency, which even his then-Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta acknowledges was a huge mistake) and after Russia’s Syrian WMD deal, Assad has felt secure and undaunted when it comes to the West, while the extremist jihadists are ascendant at the expense of the moderate rebels as much as at the expense of the regime, if not more so. And it seems, sadly, that, without U.S. leadership, there is no end to this brutal war in sight.

But with less than eighteen months left in Obama’s presidency, and with ISIS now being the priority target before Assad (though Obama reiterated earlier in July that it still his and the U.S. Government’s official position that Assad needs to step down), it is very unlikely that Assad will be gone before Obama leaves office in January 2017 or anytime soon after that, given the lack of real action the U.S. and other world powers have taken to bring this about. Obama’s current Secretary of Defense, Ashton Carter, bluntly admitted this recently during a Senate hearing. Still, the new U.S. training program for moderate rebels and new talk of a “safe zone” should not be prematurely dismissed, although nor, conversely, should any chicks be counted before the eggs are hatched.

But one final point must also be made: given America’s recent decade-and-then-some of misadventures, Obama does deserve some credit for notinserting America in a huge, destructive, or counterproductive way into the morass of the Syrian Civil War.

Grade: Overall C, more recently C+

Baraa Al-Halabi

For these reasons, the Obama Administration cannot be given lower than a C on Syria because, as discussed, the U.S. has not been a major player in Syria historically or recently and therefore cannot be said to be one those parties most at fault for the creation or perpetuation of the Syrian Civil War or its frightening metastasization and mass casualties totaling nearly a quarter of a million killed. Furthermore, contrary to recent years, the U.S. now has avoided inserting itself blunderingly and destructively into a major quicksand-like ground role in the war. It also avoided its Cold War modus operandi of blindly aiding extremist groups killing many civilians and committing many atrocities.  So, to its credit, the Administration avoiding a repeat of Iraq in 2003 as well as many of America’s misadventures from the Cold War. Yet so much more could have been done to mitigate or possibly end the war over the last four years, so many tens of thousands (or more) of lives could have been saved, and though the U.S. is far from alone in being blamed for inaction, it still could have done so much more than the very, very little it ended up doing, its embarrassing “red line” moment perhaps the most obvious example of this, when the correct and better arguments for intervention quickly fell to the side without the wind of political will to keep them aloft. To be fair to the Obama Administration, these winds of political will were absent from all significant concerned parties, with the U.S. hardly being the party with either the most responsibility to act or the most interests at stake. While recent reports suggest a very belated better-far-too-late-than-never increase in efforts to help moderate rebels, the results and the seriousness of these efforts remain to be seen, and as moderate rebels generally stand now, they have been all but pushed aside and are languishing in near-irrelevance as the conflict has devolved mainly into a conflict between Assad’s autocratic, oppressive regime and Islamist extremists intent on building a caliphate. So, even as the Administration cannot be given lower than a C, it also cannot be given higher than a C. Thus, an “average” grade of C it is, with + being added for the more recent months on the hope that recent moves, deliberations, and talk prove more fruitful and productive than the meager and disappointing efforts of the Obama Administration thus far.

Narciso Contreras/Associated Press

That’s it for Part II, coming up next the (overall) Arab Spring, ISIS, reducing America’s dependency on Mideast oil, and Iran (saving the more positive for last). If you think your site or another would be a good place for this content please do not hesitate to reach out to me! Please feel free to share and repost on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow me there at@bfry1981)

Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse April 4, 2015  

by Brian E. Frydenborg, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow me there at @bfry1981). April 4, 2015 (updated April 5th)

This was also published by by the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC) here and was “Post of the Month” for May/June.  It was also published by Stupidparty Math v. Myth here.

Related article: Republicans: Wrong on Iran Deal & Constitution, Wrong for USA & Israel

TEL AVIV — Outside of Israel and America’s Republican Party, very few people are against this emerging Iran nuclear deal, which represents the will of the governments of the UK, France, Germany, Russia, and China, as well as America (sorry, Congress and the opposition party generally don’t make foreign policy in America’s constitutional system) and Iran. And whether the hysterics of Texas Republican Senator (and delusional 2016 presidential wannabe) Ted Cruz or of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the counterarguments are hollow and myopic, and bear no weight when weighed against the alternatives. In fact, an agreement with Iran is the only realistic option that is even remotely positive; a lack of an agreement means only less transparency and either a stalemate in which Iran and the West will often continue to use the Middle East as a board in a deadly game of chess or some sort of conflict ranging from military strikes and terrorism to all-out war. An agreement does not guarantee that these far more dire scenarios will be avoided, but it is the only realistic way to avoid them. And while both opponents and supporters of an agreement have maintained that no agreement is better than a “bad” agreement, it is hard to look at this just-agreed-upon framework as a “bad” agreement, even if it not perfect. Don’t let the pursuit of the perfect be the enemy of the good, as the saying goes, since this framework is overall pretty good.

Still, none of this stops Republicans, Israel’s right-wing parties and politicians, and others from making specious, short-sighted, and misleading arguments against this agreement, arguments that, if heeded, will only perpetuate and increase conflict, violence, and death. First, let’s look at the detailed framework that was agreed upon Thursday (we won’t be going into the science of nuclear physics and uranium enrichment in this article, but you can read a great short guide to all that here). Below are some highlights:

• Iran will reduce the number of uranium-enriching centrifuges by two-thirds, and the remaining third will be older, first-generation technology
• Iran will reduce its existing supply of enriched uranium from 10,000 kilograms to just 300, a 97% reduction
• Iran’s biggest and main (also underground) nuclear research center will shift much of it attention away and facilities from activities that could result in a weapon and to advanced peaceful research, often medical
• Iran will submit to more nuclear inspections that any other country in the world today or in the history of nuclear technology. These inspections will be “robust and intrusive,” to quote President Obama, and he noted too that “If Iran cheats, the world will know it” and that “this deal is not based on trust. It’s based on unprecedented verification.”
• Economic sanctions on Iran will be lifted

The agreement will last fifteen years and seriously reduce Iran’s nuclear capabilities, though some restriction will be in place for only ten years. But as far as the U.S., only Congress has the ability to end American sanctions and President Obama has warned Republicans not to destroy the deal.

Now, let’s look at some of the common arguments against this framework.

“Iran can’t be trusted”

Really? Because America, Israel, Iraq, and Syria have all invaded countries here in a big way since the 1979 Iranian Revolution. But Iran has not initiated one single invasion since this regime took power. Yes, it has used terrorism and non-state militia actors to further its interests, but so has pretty much every Middle Eastern country (including American allies like Israel, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia) as well as the United States in recent decades. Iran has also cooperated with the U.S. against the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and, most recently, against ISIS. And Iran’s foreign policy record has been less the unpredictable, dangerous type and more like the Soviet Union’s, with Iran acting fairly predictably, rationally, and in its own interests. And this deal is most certainly in its own interests. Maybe Iran will break the deal, but the U.S. deals with countries like Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Russia, so why not give Iran a chance?

“Iran sponsors terrorism with Hezbollah! Enough said!”

So do lots of other countries, but we still cooperate with them and get meaningful results. Yes, Iran sponsors Hezbollah, but today’s Hezbollah is not your father’s Hezbollah. Rather than a resistance terrorist movement against the Israeli invasions and occupation of Lebanon, invasions and occupation starting in 1981 and ending in 2000, Hezbollah is now one of the major coalition partners of the Lebanese government and concerns itself with more governing Lebanon for most of these recent years. Minor scuffles with Israel with a few rockets launched here and there have been all that has happened between Israel and Hezbollah since the 2006 flare-up. In general, Hezbollah has been quiet in its actions (if not words) when it comes to Israel, then, for most of the last decade. So a few isolated and sporadic rocket attacks do not characterize Israel’s interaction with Hezbollah since 2006 so much as an uneasy unofficial cease-fire. Besides, Hezbollah had been much more preoccupied the last few years with fighting on behalf of Bashar al-Assad’s Shiite Alawite regime. Hezbollah, Assad and his government, and Iran are all Shiites, and it is natural for them to stick together. Iran has always been the patron and protector of Shiites Muslims facing persecutions from Sunnis, and Iran’s support is pretty much the only major support in the world than Shiites have. We may not like this, but, frankly, Shiites populations have fared pretty poorly under Sunni rule all over the Muslim world, and they face a steady stream of oppressive attacks, which frequently occur in packed Shiite mosques in the middle of a prayers and involve suicide bombers. Shiite funerals, shrines, and religious processions have also been targeted by the likes of Sunni ISIS and Sunni al-Qaeda. Conversely, Iran’s proxy* (wish I hadn’t used that word, “allied” would be better-6/24/25) actors like Hezbollah and other Shiite militias, though far from angels, have generally avoided these much more extreme tactics against civilians and places of religious worship. If anything, Hezbollah and other Shiite groups that Iran helps like the Houthis are practicing much more normal military activities, albeit of the rebel and guerilla variety, rather than that which would more fairly be called terrorism these days.

The point here is that Sunni sponsorship of terrorism, particularly from the Gulf countries (including America’s biggest allies there, though not in an official capacity), is a far greater problem than Iran’s sponsorship of Hezbollah, and that Hezbollah, unlike al-Qaeda and ISIS, has been pretty restrained in the last decade. So Iran’s relationship with Hezbollah should not make or break this nuclear deal. And, in general, Hezbollah has shied away from the type of terrorist attacks that earned it its notoriety in decades past. Sinn Fein/IRA was once a terrorist group, until it was no longer one at on point, and while Hezbollah still has some distance to travel to be like the next Sinn Fein, it is without question moving in the right direction compared to its earlier incarnation.

“An agreement will keep the U.S. and others from being able to use force to stop Iran’s program”

Not at all. Saddam Hussein agreed to terms to have his weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs disarmed to conclude the Gulf War (1990-1991), but when he violated them, that did not stop Bill Clinton from striking Saddam’s regime repeatedly, nor did it stop George W. Bush from taking the massive military action that he (incorrectly) felt was needed. No one cited an agreement that was clearly being violated, or which Saddam Hussein was clearly trying to publicly pretend to violate, as reason to hold back (though in 2003 there were certainly many other good reasons to hold back) at the time of these actions. In other words, it should be made clear that if Iran plays games and violates the agreement, there is nothing stopping the U.S. or other world powers from taking strong action to disarm Iran, and certainly the agreement itself would not stop anything. The agreement will only protect Iran, then, if Iran stays true to the terms.

“This agreement would threaten the very survival of the state of Israel.”

Why? The above is almost a direct quote from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, perhaps the master of short-term-at-the-expense-of-long-term thinking (in other words, a master politician). With no agreement, Iran is free to continue its robust nuclear program. With an agreement, this program will be severely limited, reduced, and subjected to intense and powerful inspections by the West. Without an agreement, only military force could possibly succeed and that would be incredibly difficult and not guaranteed, by any means, to succeed. In fact, just about the last thing the Middle East needs right now is a major war in Iran, and whole other books and articles could be written about the spillover effects from such an event. Any war here would almost certainly involve Israel and that would be bad, not good, for Israel’s security. And if Iran and the West come to friendly terms, there will be far more willingness on Iran’s part to rein in Israel’s nuisance, Hezbollah, which I have already explained has been reining itself in for quite some time anyway. With this agreement, it would be fifteen years before Iran would be able to develop a bomb if this agreement is observed, but this would very likely happen much, much sooner if there is no agreement. How is this bad, then, for Israel? One wonders why anyone takes Netanyahu and those who think like him seriously on this point at all.

*****

This is a fine diplomatic achievement of the Obama Administration, President Obama himself, and Sec. Kerry and their teams, but also of the other Western governments involved and of Iran’s government, as well. There is no guarantee that this will forever keep Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, but we have fifteen years of majorly slowing Iran down on this path and weakening its overall nuclear program, of having many sets of close eyes on the ground making sure that this is the situation, of preventing wars, and of increasing cooperation between Iran and the West.  Just as Peter Beinart writes, it may very well be the thaw in diplomatic relations that might be the biggest achievement here.

And the alternatives to this agreement are very likely going to involve war, possibly carried out by the U.S. and the West, but there seems to be little appetite for that among Western governments or peoples. It is far more likely to be carried out by an Israel that is more and more isolated because of its positions on and treatment of the Palestinians, and because of the actions of Benjamin Netanyahu in general. The recent fighting in Gaza against non-state terrorist militia Hamas cost dozens of Israeli lives; a fight with Iran, a powerful country with a powerful and well equipped military, would very likely cost thousands of Israeli lives and could see serious destruction all across Israel’s major cities. There is no guarantee that war would end Iran’s nuclear program, either. Even if there is not a war or military action, the current situation—with very little formal cooperation with Iran and with Iran and the West working against each other on so many issues in the region, from Israel to Yemen to Syria, and with Sunnis in the region increasing their zones of conflict with Shiites—is in no way better than a shot at really working together on these issues and defusing tensions. But Republicans and Netanyahu and the others who seek to sabotage this very necessary deal fail to mention any of this, and provide no alternatives but cold war or hot war.

Time to stop listening to these irrational, impractical naysayers and give peace a chance. Yes, the many details still need to be worked out, but we should throw all our support behind making this framework turn into a lasting deal. This deal has a high probability of happening, because why agree to the major framework and then let it fall apart? That would be like announcing a party you are hosting, only not to show up to your own party; it makes you look really bad. War is always an option no matter what, but peace is much more difficult to reach and maintain. While skepticism about all this is understandable, as Obama recently noted, “We are powerful enough to be able to test these propositions without putting ourselves at risk.” Ultimately, there is much reason to hope this will work and that Iran—a country with a large chunk of its population that is very young, liberal, reform-minded, and pro-Western—and the U.S. could accomplish much good by working together. And with Iran, with which the U.S. has been at odds for so long, it is time to try peace and a normal relationship before we think of war, which should never be a “preferred” option.

© 2019 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Brian E. Frydenborg is an American freelance writer, academic, and consultant from the New York City area. You can follow and contact him on Twitter: @bfry1981

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