EFTA01754792

From: Office of Terje Rod-Larsen <[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, September 18, 2013 2:26 PM Subject: September 18 update 18 September, 2013 Articl= 1. Bloomberg Obama and Assad Buy a Precious Com=odity: Time Fouad Ajami Article 2. The New York Times The Man With Pink Hairab> Thomas L. Friedman Articl= 3. Stratfor <http://www.stratfor.com/> Ideology Trumps American Strategy =n Syria George Friedman <http://www.realclearworld.com/authors/geo=ge_friedman/> Article 4. Project Syndicate Muzzling the Dogs of War Anne-Marie Slaughter Articl= 5. CNN Obama has lost control over Syria =olicy Robert Hutchings Article 6. Foreign Policy EFTA_R1_00055303 EFTA01754792 Why Is Turkey Sheltering a Hamas O=erative? Jonathan Schanzer <http://www.realclearworld.com/authors/jon=than_schanzer/> =span style="font-size:16.0pt; font- family:"Arial","sans-s=rif""> Article 7. Foreign Affairs The United States and the Remaking=of the Global Energy Economy Amy Myers Jaffe and Edward L. Morse &n=sp; Arti=le 1. Bloomberg Obama and Ass=d Buy a Precious Commodity: Time Fouad Ajami<=p> Sep 17, 2013 -- Asl= Aydintasbas, a young Turkish columnist with steely nerves and a keen gras= of Middle Eastern politics, sent a note from Istanbul to a Hoover Institu=ion blog where it will be published later this month. Her title tells the story: "Where Have the Americans G=ne? Who Invited the Russians Back?" It was mission acco=plished for and chttp://topics.bloomberg.com/john-kerry/> Muammar Qaddafi chttp://topics.bloomberg.com/muammar-qaddafg> in Libya <http://topics.bloomberg.corn/libyah . In their domains, these dictators had preened and strutted, and they =arned of the hell and the fire that would sweep the Arab world were they to be attacked, of the calamity and reversa=s that would await U.S. forces. Hussein had been the big neighbor next doo= and had meekly come out of a spider hole to be sent to the gallows three =ears later. Qaddafi's end had been particularly gruesome; the bluster and the money and the mercenaries and t=e secret tunnels had not protected him. A tyrant who hails =rom a despised minority sect, the Alawites, who had inflicted death and ru=n on his country, Assad wasn't eager to try his luck in the face of the =.S. missiles. Several days of strikes could embolden the Sunni Damascenes, hitherto quiescent in the face of Ala=ite repression. The crowd could fin= its nerve and courage and storm his hideout; the edifice of tyranny built=by his father could crack. In the world he ruled -- what remains of it -- = reprieve offered by the Russians could be passed off as victory. Thus a regime that (by its pronouncements) neith=r owned chemical stockpiles, nor used them, was ready to sign off on a U.5=- Russian proposal to inspect, then destroy, these stockpiles. American Retreat </=pan> Assad bought the mo=t precious of commodities: time. He had waited out the early victories of =he opposition. Help from Iran <http://topics.bloomberg.com/iran/> , and from the Hezbollah movement, had spared him certain defeat. The 2 EFTA_R1_00055304 EFTA01754793 ret=eat of the Americans would serve as a reminder to the rebellion that the powers aren't done with him, that the West won=92t redeem and arm the rebels. In a flash, Assad w=s willing to sign and ratify the Chemical Weapons Convention. A hermetical=y sealed realm, he declared, would now be open for international inspector=. That pledge needn't worry him: It was a reasonable bet that the crisis would blow over, that the Americans w=uld weary of the matter of Syria. Let the foreign inspectors scour the chi=ken coops in the country, let them search the remote Alawite hamlets where=stockpiles could be stored and hidden. Assad will have lived to fight another day. Obama brought to th=s crisis a willingness to live with a good measure of second-guessing and =idicule. His bet was that the country had changed, that the time-honored n=tions of American "credibility" no longer held sway. He had been elected to end wars, not to start them, he h=d declared time and again. The traditions of rescue of nations in distress= he seemed to imply, have died out in American thought and practice. He is a diminished =igure after this debacle. But his devotees never tire. They see wisdom and=prudence in the retreat. It is enough for them that Obama isn't George W. Bush chttp://topics.bloomberg.com/george-w.-bush/> , and that Syria isn't about to become an American =urden. Fouad Ajami is a=senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and author of =93The Syrian Rebellion." =/span> Arti=le 2. The New York Timesaspan> The Man With =ink Hair Thomas L. Friedman<=span> September 17 - I wa= at a conference in Bern, Switzerland, last week and struggling with my co=umn. News of Russia's proposal for Syria to surrender its poison gas was=just breaking and changing every hour, forcing me to rewrite my column every hour. To clear my head, I went for a=walk along the Aare River, on Schifflaube Street. Along the way, I found a=small grocery shop and stopped to buy some nectarines. As I went to pay, l=was looking down, fishing for my Swiss francs, and when I looked up at the cashier, I was taken aback: He h=d pink hair. A huge shock of neon pink hair — very Euro-punk from the =9290s. While he was ringing me up, a young woman walked by, and he blew he= a kiss through the window — not a care in the world. Observing all this joie de vivre, I thought to myself: "Wo=, wouldn't it be nice to be a Swiss? Maybe even to sport some pink hair?=94 Though I can't say for sure, I got the feeling that the man with pink=hair was not agonizing over the proper use of force against Bashar al-Assad. Not his fault; his is a tiny country= I guess worrying about Syria is the tax you pay for being an American or =n American president — and coming from the world's strongest power tha= still believes, blessedly in my view, that it has to protect the global commons. Barack Obama once had black hai=. But his is gray now, not pink. That's also the tax you pay for thinkin= about the Middle East too much: It leads to either gray hair or no hair, =ut not pink hair. Well, bring on the =recian Formula, because our leaders will need it. My big take-away from th= whole Syria imbroglio is that — with Europe ailing, China AWOL and the =rab world convulsing — for an American president to continue to lead 3 EFTA_R1_00055305 EFTA01754794 will require more help from Vladimir Putin, =ecause our president will get less help from everyone else, including the =merican people. Everyone is focusing on Obama's unimpressive leadership =n this crisis, but for my money the two main players who shaped the outcome — in ways that would not have be=n predicted but will have huge long-term implications — were Putin and t=e American people. Obama got blindsided by both. What does it tell us? The fact that Ameri=ans overwhelmingly told Congress to vote against bombing Syria for its use=of poison gas tells how much the divide on this issue in America was not l=ft versus right, but top versus bottom. Intervening in Syria was driven by elites and debated by elites. It was no= a base issue. I think many Americans could not understand why it was O.K.=for us to let 100,000 Syrians die in a civil war/uprising, but we had to s=op everything and bomb the country because 1,400 people were killed with poison gas. I and others made a case=why, indeed, we needed to redraw that red line, but many Americans seemed =o think that all we were doing is drawing a red line in a pool of blood. W=o would even notice? Many Americans also=understood that when it came to our record in the Arab/Muslim world since =/11, we were 0 for 3. Afghanistan seems headed for failure; whatever happe=s in Iraq, it was overpaid for; and Libya saw a tyrant replaced by tribal wars. I also think a lot of people l=ok at the rebels in Syria and hear too few people who sound like Nelson Ma=dela — that is, people fighting for the right to be equal citizens, not =ust for the triumph of their sect or Sharjah. It's why John McCain's soaring interventionist rhetoric wa= greeted with a "No Sale." I also think the public picked up on Obama=92s ambivalence — his Churchillian, this-must-not-stand rhetoric, clashe= with his "On second thought, I'm going to ask Congress's permission before I make a stand, and I won't call lawmaker= back from vacation to do so." The bombing was going to be bigger than a="pinprick" but also "unbelievably small." It just did not add up.<=span> Finally, there was =n "Are you kidding?" question lurking beneath it all — a sense that =ith middle-class incomes stagnating, income gaps widening and unemployment=still pervasive for both white- and blue-collar workers, a lot of Americans were asking: - This is the emergency you are =utting before Congress? Syria? Really? This is the red line you want to dr=w? I'm out of work, but this Syria thing is what shall not sta=d?" As for Putin, if herhad not intervened with his proposal to get Syria to surrender all its che=ical weapons, Obama would have had to either bomb Syria without Congressio=al approval or slink away. So why did Putin save Obama? In part, no doubt, because he felt the only way he could=save his client, the Syrian president, was by also saving the American pre=ident. But the bigger factor is that Putin really wants to be seen as a bi=, relevant global leader. It both feeds his ego and plays well with his base. The question now is: With the =merican people sidelined and Putin headlined, can we leverage Putin's in=ervention to join us in also forging a cease-fire in Syria and maybe even =ove on to jointly try to end the Iran nuclear crisis. I agree with Obama =n this: no matter how we got here, we're in a potentially better place. =o let's press it. Let's really test how far Putin will go with us. l=92m skeptical, but it's worth a try. Otherwise, Obama's hair will not just be turned gray by the Middle East these next =hree years, he'll go bald. =/span> Arti=le 3. Stratfor <http://www.stratfor.com/> Ideology Trum=s American Strategy in Syria George Fr=edman chttp://www.realclearworld.com/authors/geo=ge_friedman/> 4 EFTA_R1_00055306 EFTA01754795 September 17, 2013 =- It is said that when famed Austrian diplomat Klemens von Metternich hear= of the death of the Turkish ambassador, he said, "I wonder what he m=ant by that?" True or not, serious or a joke, it points out a problem of diplomacy. In searching for the meaning b=hind every gesture, diplomats start to regard every action merely as a ges=ure. In the past month, the president of the United States treated the act=of bombing Syria as a gesture intended to convey meaning rather than as a military action intended to achieve som= specific end. This is the key to understanding the tale that unfolded ove= the past month. When President Bara=k Obama threatened military action in retaliation for what he claimed was =he use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government, he intended a limited=strike that would not destroy the weapons. Destroying them all from the air would require widespread air attacks over=an extensive period of time, and would risk releasing the chemicals into t=e atmosphere. The action also was not intended to destroy Syrian President=Bashar al Assad's regime. That, too, would be difficult to do from the air, and would risk creating a powe= vacuum that the United States was unwilling to manage. Instead, the inten=ion was to signal to the Syrian government that the United States was disp=eased. The threat of war i= useful only when the threat is real and significant. This threat, however= was intended to be insignificant. Something would be destroyed, but it wo=Id not be the chemical weapons or the regime. As a gesture, therefore, what it signaled was not that it was dang=rous to incur American displeasure, but rather that American displeasure d=d not carry significant consequences. The United States is enormously powe=ful militarily and its threats to make war ought to be daunting, but instead, the president chose to fram= the threat such that it would be safe to disregard it. Avoiding Military A=tion In fairness, it was=clear at the beginning that Obama did not wish to take military action aga=nst Syria. Two weeks ago I wrote that this was "a comedy in three par=s: the reluctant warrior turning into the raging general and finding his followers drifting away, becoming the reluc=ant warrior again." Last week in Geneva, the reluctant warrior re-app=ared, put aside his weapons and promised not to attack Syria. When he took office= Obama did not want to engage in any war. His goal was to raise the thresh=ld for military action much higher than it had been since the end of the C=ld War, when Desert Storm, Somalia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq and other lesser interventions formed an ongo=ng pattern in U.S. foreign policy. Whatever the justifications for any of =hese, Obama saw the United States as being overextended by the tempo of wa=. He intended to disengage from war and to play a lesser role in general in managing the international sys=em. At most, he intended to be part of the coalition of nations, not the I=ader and certainly not the lone actor. He clearly regarded=Syria as not meeting the newly raised standard. It was embroiled in a civi= war, and the United States had not been successful in imposing its will i= such internal conflicts. Moreover, the United States did not have a favorite in the war. Washington has a Ion= history of hostility toward the al Assad regime. But it is also hostile t= the rebels, who -- while they might have some constitutional democrats am=ng their ranks -- have been increasingly falling under the influence of radical jihadists. The creation of a nation=state governed by such factions would re-create the threat posed by Afghan=stan and leading to Sept. 11, and do so in a country that borders Turkey, =raq, Jordan, Israel and Lebanon. Unless the United States was prepared to try its hand again once again at =ccupation and nation-building, the choice for Washington had to be "n=ne of the above." Strategy and the sp=cifics of Syria both argued for American distance, and Obama followed this=logic. Once chemical weapons were used, however, the reasoning shifted. Tw= reasons explain this 5 EFTA_R1_00055307 EFTA01754796