Peace without Justice in Syria

[tcpip]

I have recently written a piece with the above title. Rather than an on-the-hour repost (as I sometimes do), I'll give a summary version here as follows.

1. Turkey has taken Afrin and the surrounding area. It has observation posts throughout the borders of Idlib province, which has a large Syrian Turkmen population. Turkey is certainly Manij, but some other NATO forces (France in particular) is telling them to back off.

2. The Syrian regime has captured Jawbar, Zamalka, Irbin, and Hirista suburbs in Damascus, and is moving against he rebel enclave of Duma.

3. The Turkish backed-FSA will almost certainly seek to finish off the Islamicist forces in Idlib province. The Islamicist forces are notable for their lack of popular support and their military prowess.

4. The Assad regime will remain in place, instead of its leadership going to The Hague. There is no path in the immediate future for a rebel-victory, especially after the Russian military intervention. Syria is now a client-state of Russia.

5. Any remote chance of an opposition victory was overturned on January this year, when the FSA agreed to get rid of the SDF forces in Afrin.

Comments

[johnny9fingers]

And what's worse is that Israel will now be our proxy and we will do all to protect and shore them up. And we will turn a blind eye to their injustices, much in the way we tacitly or blatantly helped oppress and murder Jewish folk over centuries.

But two wrongs don't make a right.

Nevertheless, I digress.

Even if 45 sends in the Marines, Assad will remain. How much he is a monster and how much a figurehead for a monstrous regime is open to question. Even so, he should be in prison awaiting trial right now, but that isn't going to happen. Having criminals or madmen in charge of countries is a fairly common situation and not just in African or South American nations. The number of democracies which have or will succumb to criminal leadership is the number of democracies we have; it's a fault integral to the system which cannot be patched, a bit like the current theory of schizophrenia being the price we pay for language. In both cases this is a price which we must pay because the available alternatives are worse: to be without democracy, or to be without language.

(The Ursula K le Guin story en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ones_Who_Walk_Away_from_Omelas springs to mind when dealing with the schizophrenia problem. If our advantages accrue from language, those humans for whom language leaves schizophrenic can be locked up and forgotten about while we get on with enjoying ourselves. Which has been our policy since mad people stopped being holy.)

And I digress again. Boo. Just can't keep on topic today.

[tcpip]

The tangent of The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas is a welcome one, I love that story. Raises an interesting question; is our period of the lowest level of military conflict in history dependent on the relatively small war in Syria?

[johnny9fingers]

The "Pressure-Cooker Valve" theory recast as a moral quandary.

Haven't we learned anything from Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, or Iraq?
Proxy wars. Proxy wars that led to our present destabilising situation. YCMIU.

[johnny9fingers]

Will the perceived weaknesses in the present US administration and the apparent divisions in the EU, US, and UK positions give other states more or less room for manoeuvre?

The realignment of Turkey away from the core of NATO has happened.
The realignment of the EU/UK relationship has happened, destabilising part of the EU's defence capability - which will hopefully be shored up by NATO, and UK commitments to joint UK/EU defence... but still.

It must be becoming apparent to folk in power in most nations that some conventions and modern norms of national engagement are being tested. When the kerfuffle has died down we may need to redraw the rules with a congress of some kind or other wherein each nation can state their case. One might almost conceive of a permanent body to oversee this, some sort of United Nations. Oops, is my sarcasm showing again?

Maybe one day we will get the institutions to which we all should have a right. (Note the normative "should".)

I'd say the "West" is going to be tested now, more than at any time over the last half-century. I don't think a retaliation against the Syrian government forces is out of the question, and I don't think a ground war is out of the question either. It's looking messy and horrible and I guess that Uncle Vlad isn't going to play chicken. So how far the engagement spreads depends on who has got the biggest balls. And we have a lunatic in the White House who is not predictable from moment to moment, never mind over a period of longer than a week.

The thing is even in the most fanciful of extrapolations, which place the Donald as POTUS with the express help of Uncle Vlad, it seems Putin didn't factor the Donald's chaotic randomness into the equation. 45 is a man who harbours fantasies of running back into a building to confront a school shooter. It's his finger on the trigger.

Oh Uncle Vlad, what have you done? There's a song in there somewhere, yet to be written.

[halialkers]

I do. A ground war requires tedious hours of logistical preparation and other details the morons in the White House do not have the will, wit, or patience to do.

The Russians have killed their own people, invaded two NATO members, de facto broken NATO apart twice-over, and have seen that they can blatantly commit genocide outside the boundaries of Russia with zero fucks given by the rest of the world. We've seen how this cycle ended the first times it started in the 1910s and 1940s.

Only this time nukes will start flying and the Russians have a very modern arsenal and given Trump is in charge of the US modernization we'll be lucky to have any functional ones at all. The worst part is Russia is playing entirely rational decisions, just eschewing the pretense that military might isn't applicable any more like how the West lied to itself.

Like with North Korea, pushing to a point of no return *is* rational, and forgetting that *will* lead to apocalyptic slaughter in twenty minutes.

[tcpip]

> The Russians have ... invaded two NATO members

Which two are those?

[halialkers]

Georgia and Ukraine. 'Candidate' members are still members, or at least intended to be. That Russia did invade them also retroactively indicates the paranoia they had of Russia was historically grounded. So technically did the initial conquests by the Tsars and Soviet reconquests, but.....

[tcpip]

I wouldn't really consider them members, especially at this stage of their candidacy.

[halialkers]

If NATO didn't intend to enforce that expansion it shouldn't have done it.

[mahnmut]

Syria is actively being used by the so called great powers to loose some of the steam off on a neutral ground. Concerns have been rising about international tensions, a new Cold War, an imminent WW3, etc, so, as cynical as it may seem, Syria is the necessary vent to prevent a much bigger disaster (think WW2).

On the other hand, if we're to listen to prophesy, Armageddon is just next door to where the current war action is. Just sayin'.

[tcpip]

God will remind us what we already know
That the human race is about to reap what it's sown
The world is on its elbows and knees
It's forgotten the message and worships the creeds
Armageddon days are here again

[halialkers]

In all honesty it'll be some damn fool thing in the Baltic or the Donbass when Russia decides 'Well if NATO doesn't care now, why would it this time' and suddenly, oopsie, driving white people into white countries as a deliberate strategic approach matters a shit ton more than doing it to Arabs that Europe doesn't want anyway does.

To be fair since NATO can't beat Libyan insurgents against a fourth rate army without US help, Russia might reach the Rhine by the time Trump manages to do something halfassed. The Cold War was restrained by mutual fear.

Russia has fuck all reason to fear anyone at present other than China and China isn't bothered by Russian aggression in the Middle East or Europe.

[tcpip]

Well, I'm all for self-determination in Donetsk and Luhansk but I don't think the Great Powers (on either side) are interested in that.

> Russia has fuck all reason to fear anyone at present other than China

Too right. Sadly, the political climate in Russia at the moment is so toxic is that the government isn't afraid of the people.

[halialkers]

Russia and its state propaganda will never accept a 'no' answer as proper self-determination.

Why would it be? It knows that the last three US Administrations love dictators who gun their own people down in the right circumstances. Just ask Obama and his Iran policy, or Shrub and Trump and their Putin fetishism.

[oportet]

Russia backing the rulers of a middle eastern country, while the US backs various rebel groups trying to take said country over.

If only this had happened before, maybe each side coulda taken a little lesson from it.

Those who do not learn from history are likely to get a sweet Rambo 3 reboot.

[asthfghl]

Oh, but this time it'll be totally different.

[halialkers]

Can we all be honest enough to admit that had NATO actually bothered to go full throated with a full-fledged war of regime change in 2012 the chaos would be lesser than half-assed 'none of our business' until that soccer game shot up caused? Lots of people dead either way but probably not to literally 50% dead or booted out.

I'd wonder why nobody's calling to put those Russian generals who deliberately murdered doctors and hospitals on trial for war crimes like they did with Milosevic and even want with the USA, but that question might offend people, as well it should. When are war crimes not war crimes? Why the eagerness to have one imperial power held to account and cowardice with the one that sets off gas in the capitals of relatively nearby sovereign nations?

[tcpip]

At the time the President was seeking UN Security Council endorsement like with Libya; a fool's errand I agree given Russian interests. Although certainly after Syrian shells started landing in Turkish territory in 2012, then that would have been just cause for invoking collective action. I must confess at the time I was surprised that Turkey didn't make this call.

> I'd wonder why nobody's calling to put those Russian generals who deliberately murdered doctors and hospitals on trial for war crimes like they did with Milosevic

A benefit of being a permanent member of the Security Council is that you can get away with murder. Literally.

[halialkers]

Turkey *did* ask people to invoke Article V. NATO conspicuously said no, until Syria came to a soccer game. Then it was serious business.

[tcpip]

*nods* True fact. Apparently NATO doesn't consider border skirmishes serious enough (9/11 did, however, make the cut.

[halialkers]

And when Russia pushes NATO to a general nuclear exchange shit like that is where it all began. Washington, Berlin, London, and Paris may not remember who's in NATO but Russia saw it fracture completely and invades candidate members with zero reprisal.

Russia will not be insane to do that, it'll be making rational decisions until one turns out to be unlike the others.