Yesterday I was listening to the BBC and it was talking about the parliamentary vote in Britain which (at the time) would decide whether the country would take a more active role in fighting ISIS in Syria.
Part way through the Program, they interviewed a Member of Parliament (MP) who would be voting against additional military action. The MP's thesis was essentially, "What do we hope to gain out of it? What is our end goal? What can we realistically call a success?"
As expected, the bill pass, and British bombs are already falling over Syria. However, the vote did show that a large percentage of the British population agree with the MP. I too think he has made a few very valid points - the same points the U.S. has been trying to answer since the started of the War on Terror.
Obviously, he is not the first person to consider these questions regarding Syria - analysts, news organizations, and my grandma has been working on them since the start of its Civil War in 2011.
Personally, I have no idea what the answers are to these important questions and others such as:
Should we get rid of Assad? How do we prevent a repeat of Libya?
Destroy ISIS? What plans do we have for the inevitable power vacuum?
What do we do with the Kurds? Is pissing off Turkey worth the strategic value they offer? (FYI, I have been saving up a good, long rant for this one)
Heck, doing nothing is also a strategic decision that can backfire.
There are dozens (if not more) questions just like these where there are really no easy fixes - only "better than" conclusions.
Perhaps this is what makes asking them so interesting. However, I do think its pretty clear the US has made some bad calls in recent years (Assad's regime will quickly fail... he won't use chemical weapons if we threaten him...democracy in Egypt is good for the US... etc).
It made me think in more general terms on how the West seems to consistently missed the boat in the Arab World, particularly since the Arab Spring. Personally, I think there are really three major themes that have undermined the U.S.'s ability to effectively respond to these issues:
1) Mirror imaging
The word "freedom" in the Arab World does not necessarily mean tolerance from a Western perspective.
2) Underestimating religious and ethnic tensions
Yup, there are still plenty of Sunnis, Shiites, other sects, and multiple ethnic groups in the Region that would rather blow each other up than work together to improve life for everyone.
There is a famous quote from Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, "Peace will come when the Arabs love their children more than they hate us." While is was originally said in relation to Israeli Jews and Palestinians, it applies just as well to sectarian violence.
3) The impact culture has on government
In general, the Arab World is not ready for democracy. The best they can do at this point are relatively reasonable, totalitarian governments with rule of law. Jordan is a good example.
The sad part is, we should have known better. These themes are not new. I did not invent them. We saw it in Afghanistan. We saw it in Iraq. Heck, we saw it in Iran with the fall of the Shah in 1979. How did we miss it during and following the Arab Spring?
I think a large part was due to the intoxicating optimism that came from watching old irritating dictators fall. We let a certain level of wishful thinking cause biases.
I was in graduate school during the Arab Spring, and I got caught up in the optimism. I wrote a whole article about how we were seeing a validation of the Domino Theory in support of democracy and that social media is the game changer that makes it work. I'm pretty sure I driveled on about how exposure to the internet has galvanized the Arab World to embrace liberal attitudes. Perhaps there is some merit in this theory, but overall, it is a rather naive and simplistic view that didn't work as I expected.
To be fair, I'm not an expert on these issues by any stretch of the imagination. I would like to think that the seasoned analysts within the government were much more hesitant regarding the Arab Spring, and were more cautious with the champagne popped and roses portrayed in the news. I simply don't know, and can only make conclusions on our public responses.
When the Soviet Union fell, President Bush (the first) took a rather restrained approach rather than jumping up-and-down with glee. He received a fair amount of flak for that, and many argue this hurt him in his failed reelection campaign.
Today, historians typically praised him for it because of just how fragile the whole situation was. By taking a more restrained approach, President Bush allowed former Soviet Bloc leaders to maintain their dignity - never underestimate the power of personal pride in the leaders of totalitarian regimes.
Perhaps President Bush's more restrained approach would have been the smart move regarding the Arab Spring as opposed to jumping the gun by bombing Gaddafi, and declaring certain leaders "have to go." It makes the US appear rather silly.
What is clear however, is that there are at least three major questions we need to ask ourselves regarding US actions in Syria: What do we truly want out of Syria? What is realistically possible? How do we get there?
It seems the only thing the US HAS decided on is that something needs to be done about Syria.
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