Leave Bad Enough Alone. By Edward Luttwak. Foreign Policy, May 7, 2013.
The United States should forget about
intervening in Syria. Asia’s what matters.
Egypt Downgraded as Ominous Summer Nears. By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, May 10, 2013.
Luttwak:
It is
now argued most authoritatively that U.S. President Barack Obama’s failure to
act decisively to remove Bashar al-Assad’s regime from power in Syria is
explained by internal divisions within his administration, miscalculations
about the balance of power on the ground, and the president’s own irresolution.
There is another explanation, however: that the Obama administration is showing
calculated restraint induced by bitter experience and, even more, by the
overriding strategic priority of disengaging from the Islamic arc of conflict
to better engage with China.
The
all-too-obvious reason to stay out of the Syrian civil war is that the
aftermath of dictatorship has already been deeply disappointing in three Arab
countries. Tunisia suffers from chronic and sometimes violent instability,
Libya is grappling with regional and tribal fragmentation, and Egypt under the
Muslim Brotherhood has become an almost textbook case in political
mismanagement. Egyptian President Mohamed Morsy is nearly as authoritarian as
his predecessor, Hosni Mubarak, much less liberal on social matters and women's
rights, and certainly much less effective in supervising the now very badly
damaged economy. Having called for Ben Ali, Mubarak, and Qaddafi to go, one can
understand that Obama might not be thrilled by the prospect of what comes after
Assad.
The
less obvious reason for restraint in Syria is the underlying cause of these
failures. It must be a very fundamental cause indeed, given the extreme
differences between the three countries. Tunisia – with its quasi-Mediterranean
urban culture, decades of secular and stable if authoritarian rule, and
substantial homogeneity – would seem to have the preconditions for democratic
governance. Yet it is now ruled by an ineffectual Islamist party that is
plainly incapable of restarting the economy and cannot or will not protect
secular institutions from Salafi attacks. Libya, meanwhile, is as vast as
Tunisia is compact, yet with nearly half the population of its western
neighbor, it is a tapestry of heterogeneity that devolves into a multitude of
rival tribes, some of which are locked in blood feuds. And then there is Egypt,
where it was not the well-established liberal community but the Muslim
Brotherhood that won the elections, while a Salafi movement that seeks to
import Saudi extremism grabbed some 20 percent of the vote. So what is this
underlying commonality then?
One is
tempted to explain the common fate of these exceedingly different countries by
invoking the role of Islam in politics. Islam may well preclude democracy – to
cite Turkey as the counterexample is perverse, for doing so ignores that the
country was founded by an authoritarian as a secular state, which its current
Islamist rulers are eroding day by day. But there is no reason to trip over the
vast problems of contemporary Islam, because the economic level of the
populations in these North African states would not support effective
democratic governance anyway.
The
Arab Spring has indeed been consequential in awakening populations from
passivity. But this merely precludes dictatorial rule, even while these
countries’ fundamental conditions continue to preclude democracy.
Only
varieties of anarchy remain. The Syrian civil war is a bloody human tragedy,
but the United States could only end it by a full-scale military intervention –
whose ultimate result would most likely be a number of quarreling Alawite,
Sunni Arab, Kurdish, and perhaps Druze statelets. One would hope that after
more than a decade entangled in sectarian wars in the Middle East and Central
Asia, the United States would have learned to steer clear of here.
The
simple truth is that Obama has bigger fish to fry. Yes, there is a strong
humanitarian argument for intervention – but it’s the Arab League and willing
Europeans who should step up to the plate now that Turkey’s impotence has been
exposed. The United States has other new responsibilities: To respond
effectively to a rising China, it is essential to disengage from the futile
pursuit of stability in North Africa, the Middle East, and Afghanistan. Their
endless crises capture far too much policy attention and generate pressures for
extremely costly military interventions that increase rather than reduce
terrorist violence.
By
contrast, China’s neighbors increasingly boast democratic governments, with
economically advancing populations that seek only the reassurance of American
strategic engagement. They welcome Americans who visit in great and increasing
numbers for business, tourism, and even missionary work (something that can be
a death sentence in the Arab Spring countries). Beijing, meanwhile, continues
to cooperate with the United States in a great many ways – but it now also
threatens the maritime domains of Japan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia,
and Vietnam, as well as the territorial integrity of India.
The
challenge is to respond to China’s almost daily intrusions in a nuanced,
non-provocative way, so as to strengthen Beijing’s moderates – they do exist –
and dissuade its hawks, who may now include newly installed President Xi
Jinping. To do that, the U.S. government needs not only aircraft carriers and
intense diplomacy, but also a steady focus, undistracted by crises elsewhere,
especially in the combustible Middle East.
By
refusing to get dragged into the Syrian quagmire, Obama and his like-minded
advisors should be commended, not condemned, for their prudent restraint and
clear-minded strategic priorities.
