Syria: winners and losers
On 27 August, a former Chief of Armaments of the Russian armed forces, Anatoliy Sitnov, warned: “The Syrian armed forces have the [Russian-made] surface-to-surface missiles systems Buk-M2E, Tor-M2E, Osa, Krug, and something else that the Americans will learn only when they venture to go to war with Syria.” One doesn’t have to believe in a secret Russian weapon to agree that there will be unintended consequences from any punitive attack launched against Syria for its alleged use of chemical weapons, and any assessment of the likely consequences must be speculative. With that caveat in mind, and understanding that the surprises are likely to be on the downside not the upside, the following is how we believe the balance sheet of winners and losers will look after any Western attack. Our working assumption is that any attack will be a limited punitive mission using cruise missiles and air power aimed at the regime’s military and command-and-control targets.
Although no party will relish an escalation of the conflict, the most likely beneficiaries from a Western attack will be the Syrian rebels, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the other Sunni Arab opponents of the Assad regime, and Israel.
Of these, the cases of Turkey and Israel are the most interesting. Turkey’s foreign policy under Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been widely criticized, and with good reason. Ankara has moved from having “zero problems with neighbours” to being almost without a significant ally in the region at the same time as moving steadily away from Europe. Its most important gambles, of supporting the rebellion against Assad in Syria and the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, both seemed to have failed. Its ambitious aim was the establishment of a Muslim Brotherhood-based alliance led by Turkey and including Egypt, Tunisia, Qatar, Libya, the Gaza Strip under Hamas, and a post-Assad Syria.
The Muslim Brotherhood is not going to be allowed back to power in Egypt, which was by far the most important element in Erdogan’s grand plan, but now at least the Syrian leg of this gamble does not look quite so much like the busted flush it seemed to be only a week ago. The price of success, however, will be further animosity from Iran and Russia.
Israel’s case is entirely different. It will not relish either a pro-Turkey, Islamist-tinted regime in Damascus or (if that does not come about) a further prolongation – and widening - of the chaos on its northern border. On the other hand, an end to Iranian influence in Syria, and a consequent weakening of its influence in Lebanon, would be clearly to Israel’s benefit. Assuming (as we must for now) that a US-led punitive attack on Syria would be devastating and successful, it should have the additional benefit for Israel of either a) making Iran understand the consequences of continuing defiance over its nuclear programme or 2) leading to Iran refusing any further contact with the West, thus bringing forward the moment when the US would have to resort to military power to stop it crossing the nuclear Rubicon.
The most likely losers of a successful punitive strike would be the Assad regime, the Syrian Kurds, Iran, and Russia. The likely effect on the Assad regime, which has of late shown signs of winning (or at least not losing) the war, is obvious; the consequences for Iran are likely to be as noted above; and whilst the Syrian Kurds will not be outright losers, they will have to adjust their strategy given that they have acquired de facto autonomy through supporting the Assad regime against the Sunni rebels.
For Moscow, there is nothing that is good about a Western attack on the Assad regime. The Kremlin has already indicated that it will do nothing militarily to respond to such an attack, and that it will issue no ultimatums to try to prevent one. This is because it is no position to, and once again Russia will have been shown up to be a paper tiger by the West – which will be an additional negative for Iran.
But what about the Western powers? Unless it is proven that someone other than the Assad regime was responsible for the chemical attack, the United States has no option but to launch a punitive strike. The chairman of the Israeli Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee, Avigdor Lieberman, may be a well-known hawk but he is, nevertheless, no doubt correct when he says: “It is clear that the entire region and the international community are treating the Syrian case as a test of the US’s foreign policy and security concept. The president’s personal trustworthiness and that of the entire American administration are on the line. So is the reputation of American policy and US ability to wield influence, as well as its status as a leading world power.”
An attack on Syria will do nothing to restore stability to the region, but it will at least establish that when the US draws a red line it means it. Issuing red lines, as President Obama has done, and then allowing a regime such as Assad’s to get away with crossing them with no significant consequences would indeed be, as Lieberman warns, devastating for US global influence – and exceptionally dangerous, as few things are more destabilizing than a great power whose threats are not believed. It leads to war.
There will also be some loss of reputation for the US. There will be many of a conspiratorial mind who will agree with the Jordan columnist who wrote this week: “The West is clearly fabricating ‘evidence’ in order to proceed with a pre-prepared scenario that allows it to wage war on Syria regardless of who has resorted to chemical weapons there.”
And there will be those who, already seeing American hypocrisy in its abandonment of democratic principles in Egypt, will see further hypocrisy in the US’s readiness to bypass the UN Security Council when it doesn’t get the answers it wants. But that is not necessarily disastrous for the US: fear is a more realistic basis for great power hegemony than love. In international affairs, principle can get you only so far.
More serious will be the effect on US-China relations. A further awesome display of US air and sea power, launched without authorization from the UN Security Council and on the back of allegations that at least some in the Middle East are querying, will ensure that China will continue to fear the worst about the US pivot to Asia. No doubt that would have been the case in any event, but an attack on Syria will surely provide the Beijing hawks with all the justification they could wish for. JdeC.