An Imaginative, Creative Way to Deal with the Syrian Crisis

Stephen Walt
Foreign Policy, 29 August 2013

I'm attending the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association this week, so I don't have much time to blog. I'd love to write about something besides Syria, but it's hard to avoid such an obvious issue right now. Here are a few further thoughts to add to my previous posts on the subject.

First, it looks like Barack Obama's administration has painted itself into something of a corner (though to be fair, a lot of inside-the-Beltway hawks were wielding their own paintbrushes too). With the administration having made a number of unequivocal statements about the Assad government's responsibility for the chemical weapons attacks, it is going to be hard for it to do nothing and not get accused of being wishy-washy at best and pusillanimous at worst.

But there are several problems. It's still not clear what positive objectives a limited use of force would accomplish. It won't tip the balance inside Syria or drive Bashar al-Assad from power. It's not even clear that punitive strikes would do much to reinforce the norm against chemical weapons use, as any leader contemplating the use of these weapons in the future is probably going to be in pretty dire straits and might not care if some foreign power might retaliate. Moreover, the American people are clearly not interested in getting into this war, and Obama and the Dems could pay a big price if retaliation goes awry in any way. Indeed, as Conor Friedersdorf writes in a brilliant piece on the Atlantic's website, this is another elite-driven intervention led by inside-the-Beltway politicos who are addicted to using American power even when vital U.S. interests aren't at stake.

Perhaps what bothers me most is how little imagination we seem to be showing in dealing with this deeply troubling situation. Everyone seems to be viewing this as a vexing problem that just has to be managed, instead of asking whether the crisis might be an opportunity for creative and potentially game-changing diplomacy.

To be specific: Why not use the crisis over chemical weapons as an opportunity to launch a new diplomatic initiative? Start by referring the matter to the U.N. Security Council, and let everyone on the Security Council see the intelligence that lies behind U.S. suspicions. And as Sean Kay has proposed, for good measure we could ask the Security Council to refer the issue of possible war crimes to the International Criminal Court. But most importantly, before launching punitive strikes that probably won't accomplish anything positive, the United States could invite the European Union, Russia, China, Turkey and -- wait for it -- Iran to a diplomatic conference on Syria.

What would that accomplish? Plenty. Including Iran would satisfy its long-standing desire to be recognized as a regional stakeholder (which it is, no matter how much the United States tries to pretend otherwise). America would giving Iran the chance to play a constructive role, much as Iran did back in 2002 and 2003 over Afghanistan. Doing so would also help ensure that the crisis in Syria didn't interfere with the more important task of negotiating an agreement on Iran's nuclear program. Inviting Iran into the picture would also be a way of rewarding the moderate stance the President Hasan Rouhani has taken since his election and his own public condemnation of any use of chemical weapons.

This route is obviously unlikely to yield an agreement that removes Assad from power, at least not anytime soon. My guess is that the most one could hope for is an agreement that imposed a cease-fire, acknowledged the de facto partition of Syrian territory into government and opposition zones, began negotiations on some sort of power-sharing arrangement, and maybe got outside powers to reduce their support for their various clients. But might this approach also begin to weaken the political support Assad has been getting from Russia, China, and Iran? They can't enjoy being the main protectors of a larcenous regime that has been killing lots of innocent people, and they might be looking for a way to distance themselves provided their own interests are protected.

As with all diplomatic initiatives, the idea sketched above might fail. But I doubt it would do any harm to try it, and it would certainly make the United States look less trigger-happy. That would be a positive outcome all by itself.

Cartwright saga part of wider Iran debate

By Phillip Ewing | Politico Pro
June 28, 2013

James Cartwright never wanted a shooting war with Iran to become a forgone conclusion.

The former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs said so in public, urging audiences to expand their thinking about how the U.S. should to try to deter Tehran. The question raised Thursday night was whether he said so in private to The New York Times, even giving reporter David Sanger classified details about America’s cyberstrategy, including the cyberweapon Stuxnet.

Heather Hurlburt, director of the National Security Network, said when she went back and looked at the Times stories, she remembered the impression they created when they first appeared last year.

“You did very much have the feeling that, at the time, someone they had been talking to was aggrieved that they thought they were making good progress and that they weren’t getting enough credit for it,” she said. “I have no idea where it came from or why it came out, but very much the tone of the coverage does support the idea that somebody thought, ‘Hey, this is an important part of the arsenal that we have to deal with the Iran problem that’s not getting recognized.’”

Official Washington is not discussing Thursday’s press reports that Cartwright is under investigation for leaking Stuxnet details — the Pentagon, the Justice Department and the White House all have declined to comment. An attorney said to be representing Cartwright did not respond to a message from POLITICO.

But two defense insiders said Friday that one way to understand the storyline, and Cartwright’s role, is to look at it in the context of the larger, long-term debate in Washington over how to handle Iran’s nuclear program. On one side, Hurlburt said, are the hard-power hawks “who really only see U.S. leadership through a kinetic and unilateral prism, to use a couple of buzzwords.”

On the other, Hurlburt said, is “the national security establishment that can create and use and these kinds of unconventional tools and a centrist national security policy consensus about how the American people want to get things done — which is to avoid large new wars.”

During last year’s presidential campaign, she said, supporters and opponents of attacking Iran used it as “shorthand” to make arguments against each other. Mitt Romney and Republicans said they wanted to stop Iran’s centrifuges with an attack, calling for an aggressive role for the U.S. in the world. President Barack Obama and many Democrats said they preferred to exhaust diplomacy first.

But the incumbent White House also wanted to send a message that just because it opposed pre-emptive air strikes didn’t mean the government was sitting on its hands.

“The GOP had attempted to make hay over the ‘failure’ of the administration’s Iran policy,” said Carl Conetta, director of the Project on Defense Alternatives. “Throughout the year, others, too, had suggested that the administration’s policy was not effectively curbing Iran. Iran was a central issue at the G-8 summit, and Congress took independent action to strengthen sanctions. In this context, a leak to The New York Times on Stuxnet might assuage concerns within the Democratic coalition about the administration’s handling of Iran.”

But Conetta cautioned against connecting dots and forming the wrong picture: “The fact that I or you or anyone can find a plausible rationale for Cartwright (or someone else) to leak such information doesn’t make it true — just more plausible.”

That “plausible rationale” also raises a major question: If the White House wanted Americans to know about its secret campaign against Iran as a way to assist Obama’s reelection bid, why would the government later pursue the man who may have gotten out the message?

One possibility is politics: Republicans howled after the Stuxnet story appeared and since then, the White House has cracked down on leaks as much as any administration in history, tracking phone records and intercepting emails.

Another is Cartwright himself, said to have made as many enemies as friends around the capital, given his departures from the official consensus on Iran, Afghanistan and strategic weapons. He was the subject of a whisper campaign in 2011, when Pentagon reporters were told he’d been investigated — but cleared — in an alleged inappropriate relationship with a female subordinate.

A younger Marine officer in Cartwright’s command had fallen asleep, possibly while drunk, in his hotel room during a visit to Eastern Europe, DoD’s inspector general had found. Although he was not implicated in any wrongdoing, the headlines did not help his reputation.

Then on Thursday, someone leaked the allegation that Cartwright is under investigation for leaks.

“This climate around leaks is so interesting right now,” Hurlburt said. “Does this make it into a witch hunt, or go from a witch hunt to an anti-witch hunt? Plus, there’s the whole question of why it came out now — it’s deeply fascinating.”

For his part, Conetta said he was dubious that Cartwright might have given out classified information, especially out of bitterness over potentially having been passed over for a higher job in the Pentagon.

“It’s hard for me to believe that an officer with such a distinguished career would behave in such a risky and petty way,” Conetta said. “So little to gain personally; so much to lose.”

Ewing, Philip (June 28, 2013).  "Cartwright saga part of wider Iran debate."  Politico Pro.