Q: are we not MENA? A: we are the rolling middle east, north africa and other geopolitical hot spots thread 2016!

there seems to be more going on there than that, tbf

sure, my point was only that your two scenarios weren't really mutually exclusive, the latter has incorporated the former in a significant way

my point was only that 'the thing that didn't happen' has now undergone a significant inflation, allowing us to claim even more credit for what never happened.

right and maybe if we hadn't intervened gaddafi and the rebels would've agreed to sit down to talks and work out a power-sharing democratic government w/ a slow peaceful transition out of power for gaddafi

There was a time when the United States seemed to have a perpetual bias toward action. The instinct of leaders, more often than not, was to act militarily even in relatively small conflicts that were remote from American national security interests. Our country’s tragic experience in Iraq changed that. Inaction came to be seen as a virtue.

this is stupid neocon nonsense btw

sounds like a value judgement free description of reality to me unless you don't think inaction has come to be seen as a virtue which i think in the case at least of the obama administration and a large % of the population it has

Just to play devil's advocate: I've been reading Black Earth of late, where Tim Snyder looks at the bloodlands of Eastern Europe during and in the aftermath of WWII, and makes a strong case against disrupting regimes that provide local stability. In this place and era, genocidal anger seethed from the grassroots, much different from Western Europe where Hitler's solutions were imposed against local resistance. The Middle East looks a lot more like Snyder's Eastern Europe than the Western Europe that informs too many policy advisors. In this environment, disrupting nation states through uprising or aggressive war predictably brings widespread terror.

The local despots in the mid-East aren't so much mini-Hitlers imposing ideologically motivated violence, but are/were informed pragmatists motivated by legitimate fears of what would occur with the collapse of central authority. Saddam Hussein and Bashar al-Assad did what was historically necessary to prevent domestic uprisings, and even atrocities like the Hawizeh marshes (1991) or Hama (1982) arguably saved lives by forstalling uprisings for a generation. Exemplary punishment works.

In Assad's case, there was never a plausible alternative Syrian power that wouldn't massacre his Alawite minority, given the opportunity. There were only his own Alawites, his allies among the equally hated Damascus mercantile class, and slums teeming with underemployed Sunni Arabs resulting from Syria's population explosion. Moderate educated/expat elites (such as the FSA) never commanded many boots or much loyalty. For U.S. policy, this means that aside from satisfying AIPAC's calls for payback, there was never a positive, Jordan-like outcome that could be reached by supporting the opposition. The best we could have done is issue stern denounciations without giving any opposition succor.

and makes a strong case against disrupting regimes that provide local stability

tbf a. the disruption of the regime in the cases of libya and syria were going to happen, and primarily because of internal division not because of a major power invading and deposing the govt. (unless you believe the arab spring in general is an entente western plot.) b. exemplary punishment itself has been an excuse for massacres and genocide - stalin commanded a huge empire but he had to kill 30-50 million people to keep it running / point taken that alawites were never going to let sunnis rule them (though i imagine the risk of massacre went way up after years of assad's indiscriminate bombing) but sometimes the cure is just as bad. especially when it wasn't particularly stable to begin w/.

Times of Israel reporting a Turkey official said that Israel has agreed to lift the blockade on Gaza. Big grains of salt obv needed but if true it's a big deal.

Countdown till something happens that convinces Israel to reimpose the blockade before it's even lifted, 10, 9, 8 ...

hey maybe hamas will decide this time that it's better to lift the blockade than score another pyrrhic questionable PR victory against the zionist entity!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/saudi-arabia-the-devil-we-know/2016/04/21/2109ecf6-07fd-11e6-b283-e79d81c63c1b_story.html?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-a%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

Mostly the same ol, same ol but slightly interesting

The Aramco story is probably more significant than any other piece of news out of Saudi in a long time. As the guy being interviewed on Bloomberg mentions, the idea is to continue the shift away from oil and create the world's largest sovereign wealth fund. They also want to make Riyadh a genuine business hub. You can't really accomplish the latter without the kind of cultural reforms that might make people want to come and do business in Saudi Arabia.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-25/saudi-prince-says-aramco-valuation-seen-at-above-2-trillion

haven't they been saying something like that for like 30 years

But only now are slightly younger folks having an influence in their economic planning

another msf bombing
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/airstrike-destroys-doctors-without-borders-hospital-in-aleppo-killing-staff-and-patients/2016/04/28/e1377bf5-30dc-4474-842e-559b10e014d8_story.html

terrible. No comment from Syria.

MSF says they had given coordinates of their Afghan hospital to US, as the story re that incident continues to trickle out

State Dept. spokesperson: “I’m not disputing the fact that we have troops on the ground, and they’re wearing boots.”

https://theintercept.com/2016/04/29/as-more-american-boots-hit-the-ground-in-syria-u-s-parses-boots-and-ground/

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/01/world/middleeast/syrian-city-torn-by-war-shows-jarring-resolve-to-try-to-live-normally.html?_r=0

What Assad has been up to with Russian assistance --

Four years of war has hardened hearts in Aleppo, a divided city and, for the past week, the scene of merciless fighting.

A fragile truce, brokered by the United States and Russia, has crumbled in Syria, leading to the worst violence in months. Russian fighter jets roar through the sky, pounding targets in rebel-held areas. The rebels send barrages of mortar rounds and homemade missiles that land in crowded neighborhoods. The war has stoked sectarian tensions and become a proxy battle for regional and global interests.

Most fatalities are civilians — at least 202 in the past week, about two-thirds in rebel-controlled eastern areas and the remainder in the government-held west side, according to groups that monitor casualties. The violence shows a “monstrous disregard for civilian lives,” the United Nations’ human rights chief, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, said Friday.

One of the world’s oldest inhabited cities, Aleppo has for centuries been known as the crossroads of empires, with Ottoman, Armenian, Jewish and French influences. Today the only way in, on the government side, is via a lonely road that cuts through hostile territory: a bumpy tarmac strip lined with deserted villages and isolated government outposts.

US Secretary of State John Kerry says envoys meeting in Geneva are getting closer to an understanding on salvaging the cessation of hostilities in Syria.

He told reporters progress was being made on a plan to reduce the violence in the second city of Aleppo, which has threatened to sink the nine-week truce.

But he accused the Syrian government of "blatantly violating" the agreement to halt hostilities and allow aid in.

About 250 people have reportedly been killed in Aleppo in the past nine days.

...

The Syrian government and Russia have said the Aleppo air strikes are targeting only al-Nusra, which is affiliated to al-Qaeda and is excluded from the cessation of hostilities along with the rival Islamic State group.

However, the opposition and the US have dismissed the claim, and accused the government of targeting civilians and rebels abiding by the cessation of hostilities. ....

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-36183569

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/02/moqtada-al-sadr-who-is-the-cleric-directing-iraqs-protests

From a US and British perspective, the most pressing issue in Iraq is defeating Islamic State. For Iraqi citizens, however, it is the ongoing abject failure of the prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, and his government to provide basic public services, create jobs, and root out corruption among the country’s kleptocratic political class.

Into this gap between external strategic perception and domestic political reality has stepped Moqtada al-Sadr, the charismatic Shia cleric and former Mahdi army leader whose virulent sectarianism and violent resistance to the US occupation earned him notoriety in the west and hero status among many Iraqi Shias between 2004 and 2008.

The street protest movement that has rocked Baghdad in recent weeks, culminating in the weekend invasion of the walled government, parliament and embassy enclave known as the green zone, is largely directed by Sadr, who has moved his centre of operations from the holy city of Najaf to the capital. Some demonstrations have drawn up to 200,000 people.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-white-houses-iraq-delusion/2016/05/03/4d94a94c-108f-11e6-81b4-581a5c4c42df_story.html

The neo-con W. Post editorial Board is never happy with Obama's handling of foreign policy. Here they are on Iraq now:

In its zeal to withdraw all U.S. troops in time for President Obama’s reelection campaign in 2012, the administration threw its weight behind then-Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, with disastrous consequences. Mr. Maliki’s Shiite sectarianism fractured the fragile political system and opened the way for the Islamic State. In 2014, having pushed for Mr. Maliki’s removal, the administration bet on Haider al-Abadi; now, in its impatience to reduce the Islamic State before Mr. Obama leaves office, it clings to a prime minister who has proved unable to govern the country or reconcile its warring factions.

...

Whether Mr. Abadi survives the present crisis will likely depend on whether Shiite parties, with help from Iran, can patch up their differences. But already he has proved incapable of addressing Iraq’s fundamental political problem, which is the schism among the Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish communities. That brings us to the Obama administration’s second error: an unwillingness to accept that Iraq cannot survive under its present system of governance, which centralizes power in Baghdad

...The latest crisis should prompt a reconsideration. Kurdish leaders are now openly saying that Iraq’s post-2003 political structure has collapsed; the United States should be forging closer ties to their regional government. It should also be working to encourage a similar federal state in Sunni areas of Iraq. If Iraq survives as a nation-state, it will be because power, and oil revenues, are radically decentralized from Baghdad. Continuing to center U.S. support on a single Iraqi leader, whether it is Mr. Abadi or someone else, is a recipe for more failure.

But already he has proved incapable of addressing Iraq’s fundamental political problem, which is the schism among the Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish communities.

yeah geez get it together already, it's not like this has proven to be an intractable problem for 100s of years or anything

lol exactly

fwiw I predicted partition as the eventual outcome as soon as the ramp up to the war began

without an empire or a fascist, there's no way (or reason either) to hold such an artificial construct of a country like that together

Partition is the worst solution except for all the other ones.

well yeah. Iran would basically annex as much shi'ite dominated territory as it could, Turks would immediately declare open war on Kurdistan, Sunnis left weak and beleaguered, a broken nation

or something like that

Iran isn't interested in annexing lower Mesopotamia. Different cultures/languages and Iran has enough domestic problems already. But they would like a proxy/buffer state between them and the Gulf state Arabs who are constantly threatening to bomb them. The best case scenario for Iran is basically the current one: a fractious, weakened nation next-door, politically dominated by their proxies. An independent Kurdistan would be a thorn given their own Kurd population. And Iran is certainly least objectionable neighbor for autonomous but not independent Kurds.

Iran's indirect approach has worked remarkably well for the past 15 years, even their allies who have been torn asunder owe them more loyalty/favors than ever before. When the Sauds realize bombing won't change the humanitarian crisis of Yemen, and Bahrain collapses, Iran's influence in a bad neighborhood will be further strengthened.

erdogan and barzani are pals now there's no way turkey would invade atm

this eli lake article gave me a grim chuckle:

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2016-05-04/can-a-demagogue-help-save-iraq-s-democracy

it's a p good rundown of events *afaict, but lake's framing (on twitter) was like "this man has killed americans, can he save iraqi democracy?" idk buddy is killing americans all that unpopular generally?

also shows that the relationship between the iranian gov't and iraqi shiites isn't so simple i guess

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/magazine/the-aspiring-novelist-who-became-obamas-foreign-policy-guru.html?_r=0

Big NY Times mag story on Obama advisor Ben Rhodes, the 38 year-old deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, ...He is, according to the consensus of the two dozen current and former White House insiders I talked to, the single most influential voice shaping American foreign policy aside from Potus himself.

What has interested me most about watching him and his cohort in the White House over the past seven years, I tell him, is the evolution of their ability to get comfortable with tragedy. I am thinking specifically about Syria, I add, where more than 450,000 people have been slaughtered.

“Yeah, I admit very much to that reality,” he says. “There’s a numbing element to Syria in particular. But I will tell you this,” he continues. “I profoundly do not believe that the United States could make things better in Syria by being there. And we have an evidentiary record of what happens when we’re there — nearly a decade in Iraq.”

Iraq is his one-word answer to any and all criticism. I was against the Iraq war from the beginning, I tell Rhodes, so I understand why he perpetually returns to it. I also understand why Obama pulled the plug on America’s engagement with the Middle East, I say, but it was also true as a result that more people are dying there on his watch than died during the Bush presidency, even if very few of them are Americans. What I don’t understand is why, if America is getting out of the Middle East, we are apparently spending so much time and energy trying to strong-arm Syrian rebels into surrendering to the dictator who murdered their families, or why it is so important for Iran to maintain its supply lines to Hezbollah. He mutters something about John Kerry, and then goes off the record, to suggest, in effect, that the world of the Sunni Arabs that the American establishment built has collapsed. The buck stops with the establishment, not with Obama, who was left to clean up their mess.

the clearest mandate obama had was no more foreign entanglements, no more interventions, no more wars. it's hard to fault him for following said mandate even if rhodes is wrong and we could've prevented some of the syrian catastrophe.

it was also true as a result that more people are dying there on his watch than died during the Bush presidency, even if very few of them are Americans.

eeehh I dunno about this, laying that at Obama's feet doesn't seem particularly accurate or helpful

maybe more people are dying in syria but its not because of direct us intervention, like what happened with the 400k+ civilian deaths post iraq war 2.

well his position hinges on the assumption that *less* people would have died if the US had intervened and frankly our track record in the middle east doesn't really support that imo

Rhodes singled out a key example to me one day, laced with the brutal contempt that is a hallmark of his private utterances. “All these newspapers used to have foreign bureaus,” he said. “Now they don’t. They call us to explain to them what’s happening in Moscow and Cairo. Most of the outlets are reporting on world events from Washington. The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing.”

He had also developed a healthy contempt for the American foreign-policy establishment, including editors and reporters at The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker and elsewhere, who at first applauded the Iraq war and then sought to pin all the blame on Bush and his merry band of neocons when it quickly turned sour. If anything, that anger has grown fiercer during Rhodes’s time in the White House. He referred to the American foreign-policy establishment as the Blob. According to Rhodes, the Blob includes Hillary Clinton, Robert Gates and other Iraq-war promoters from both parties who now whine incessantly about the collapse of the American security order in Europe and the Middle East.

But has his contempt succeeded, other than keeping thousands of American ground troops out of Syria? Or is that enough. Also, the new response I am seeing to his "Iraq failed", is but the Balkans was a success, how about looking at that too...

I don't remember or know enough about the Balkans to decide whether that response has any merit, or if its mixing apples and oranges ...

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/05/let-us-now-psychoanalyze-young-ben-rhodes

Kevin Drum defends Rhodes against critics who say he was arrogantly boasting about conning reporters.

I think Drum's characterization of Lozada's response is overly dismissive. The piece is gross and Samuels is an asshole, pandering to his subject the whole way through while he laughs at Rhodes' disdain for his colleagues. Rhodes has apparently been having to live a lot of this down over the phone since the piece came out.

Rhodes is about to become Another Former Speechwriter so he gets to try to make it up to anybody he respects or cares about with his inevitable book. Samuels OTOH sounds like he's just a bit of good timing away from being nearly another Judith Miller himself.

Also, the new response I am seeing to his "Iraq failed", is but the Balkans was a success, how about looking at that too...

I don't remember or know enough about the Balkans to decide whether that response has any merit, or if its mixing apples and oranges ...

The Republic of Kosovo has always been considered a puppet state by its own people and is effectively ruled by the construction mafia today, resulting in fascinating zoning issues in Pristina iirc.

Kosovo will probably be absorbed into Greater Albania at some point. As far as i can tell, Kosovo was set to be the UN's most expensive mission ten years ago and is still draining money now, to the extent that it's seen as a racket by a lot of Kosovars. There's not a huge amount of point in having highly paid and lavishly accommodated UN workers or soldier there, particularly as they're turning a blind eye to corruption, but it's too lucrative for them to withdraw. This is all slightly tangential to the main thrust of the thread but calling the Balkans a success ignores how badly post-war governance structures were set up in Kosovo and Bosnia.

don't quite follow that last post; if UN/EU/other foreign officials are haemorrhaging money then surely they would want to withdraw, and however much money local elites might be making out of it, surely they don't have much of a say in how long those programs continue?

That assumes the UN cares about how much it is spending there. The perception, correct or otherwise, is that it is a cushy number for so many people they find ways to string it out indefinitely.

I didn't think the parameters and length of the UN mission in Kosovo was ultimately determined by those on the ground. my impression was that although very much a mixed bag, that some of the more successful institutions have been ones shaped by the UN, with a big emphasis on meritocratic recruitment and striving towards the ideal of a weberian impersonal bureaucracy, which compared favourably to less coordinated efforts from the EU or the UK. there wasn't really a precedent for the sort of top down creation of political institutions and shift in political culture attempted in Kosovo, so it's hard to know what the reasonable expectations are that we can judge the international efforts against

Idk, the feedback that I get from the NGOs I work with is that KFOR is still there in large numbers to give NATO soldiers something to do and the bulk of the UN mission has turned into a self-perpetuating bureaucracy that focuses more time on justifying its presence than monitoring the implantation of strong governing structures. The direct investment with strong oversight of spending that Germany has been doing is much more warmly welcomed. The government is still a complete mess and, though it hasn't traditionally been welcomed internationally, there seems to be an internal push to resolve some of the structural issues with a much closer economic, political and cultural union with Albania, which they should arguably have been encouraged to do much earlier.

Structurally, Bosnia is even worse though, and probably a textbook example of how not to set up a government.

I do wonder how long the UN was envisaging they would be involved for when they signed onto this, pushing 20 years doesn't make this case much of a model for future situations

US export rules that rely on weapon reliability standards have not prevented the sale of cluster munitions to Saudi Arabia, putting civilians at long-term risk, Human Rights Watch said. Cluster munitions are prohibited by a 2008 treaty signed by 119 countries, though not Saudi Arabia, Yemen, or the US.

“The US has sold Saudi Arabia cluster munitions, a weapon most countries have rejected due to the harm they cause civilians,” said Steve Goose, arms director at Human Rights Watch and chair of the Cluster Munition Coalition, the international coalition of groups working to eradicate cluster munitions. “Saudi Arabia should stop using cluster munitions in Yemen or anywhere else, and the US should stop producing and exporting them.”

http://www.juancole.com/2016/05/saudis-cluster-munitions.html

map porn here:
http://publicdomainreview.org/collections/the-map-that-changed-the-middle-east-1916/

lots of good skeptical questions about how a iraq partition would work:
http://warontherocks.com/2016/05/partitioning-iraq-make-a-detailed-case-or-cease-and-desist/