The New Way of War is the Old Way of War

There is a lot of wishcasting when it come to talking about "the next war." A lot of money is to be made in peace selling a vision of what people desire the next war to be; a fast war, an easy war, a war fought on our ethical spectrum with the weapons we like, on a timescale that works best for us. 

History teaches that war does not work this way. No one gets the next war exactly right, but some get it partially right. That is why you need to be suspicious of single points of failure or any cult-like following of concepts or personalities that make this historically hard seem easy.

There is one thing that you can count on when it comes to big or even medium wars; they will last longer than you think. You will also find out in the first few months what you bought in to works or does not work; what kit you need more of, what you have in excess.

In those few months you will also see something else come out in stark relief against the background; the hints about what this war would be like were there all along in bits and shadow from the small and medium sized wars in the decade or so prior to the big one. The longer an army or navy is at peace before the next war, the greater the delta will exist between theory and reality.

As we've discussed here, there are examples of small conflicts going on right now that are providing invaluable lessons that should be the center of our attention. Most of the lessons from these conflicts - Ukraine, Syria, and Libya are just three - are land centric, but in all three places there are some useful lessons in the maritime sector on the margins. 

While it is easy or comfortable to discuss things on the tactical level, or as in the above paragraph service specific topics, on Syria, what are a few things we should be looking at - on the strategic level?  

Eyal Berelovich over at Military Strategy Magazine has a great overview of the long Syrian Civil War. In line with the bias towards long wars, this one bit rang especially true;

Attrition-based warfare ... proved to be an operational concept that allows the Syrian army to overcome its enemies. The question is will it affect the future structure and military strategy of the Syrian army: 

...

...it is plausible to think that the army will be made of two armies: one that can execute offensive operations to limited geographical objectives and another that will be able to only do defensive operations. Both armies will have sufficient fire power to attrite enemy forces while minimizing the damage the enemy could cause them.

Other nations are learning this lesson. They have nurtured a briar patch they will love for someone to jump in to.

While some potential opponents will pay attention to these lessons - which parallel what we are seeing in Ukraine and Libya - I don't think we are likely to want to take these lessons onboard. They are unpleasant. They are not in line with how our republic likes to fight its wars.

Additionally, there is a modern twist here that I'm not sure how to fully see how it plays out. 

For all of modern history, waring nations were young and growing with high fertility rates. What if the nature of war has not changed as much as human demographics have changed? What is the impact of wars of attrition on ageing populations with many families only having one child, or at best one son? How do they respond differently based on the system of government they exist under?

If you properly examine these questions, how do you arrange your force structure and OPLANs?

Leaving the strategic questions and returning to a service specific question; does the 2021 USN look more like the IJN or USN prior to WWII when it comes to the ability to fight a naval war of attrition?

If wars of attrition are the old/new of the 21st Century ... how do we posture our military and industrial base to flex to that need?

Crossposted on substack.

The Ghosts of Gadaffi and Milošević Haunt Syria

I think I’ll keep on the Syria topic for another day just for an observation that bubbled up again after yesterday’s post; why Assad isn’t going anywhere.

There is a strange amnesia coming from the internationalist nomenklatura as to why Assad has held on so long, why the war has gone on so long, and how steadfast the Syrians are to keep moving towards eliminating the last Islamists holdouts in their territory.
Assad is no fool - he’s an ophthalmologist after all - and from day-1, there was zero reason for him to do anything but go for the win in his civil war.

All he had to do is look to his northwest and southwest to see examples where the internationalist West was not to be trusted when they called for peace or negotiation short of total victory.

First, there is what happened to the former head of the former Yugoslavia when the West's benighted "Smartest-People-In-The-Room" convinced him that it was in his best interest to agree to peace.

As the former Yugoslavia consumed itself, some version of peace was reached via the Dayton Peace Agreement.

There they are, signing the agreement.

Slobodan Milošević (third from left), Alija Izetbegović (fourth from left), and Franjo Tudjman (sixth from left) initialing the Dayton Accords at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, outside Dayton, Ohio, November 21, 1995.

What did Milošević for his efforts?

On 11 March 2006, former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milošević died in his prison cell of a heart attack, while being tried for war crimes at the ICTY in The Hague...

Less than a decade after Dayton with the Iraqi invasion still in the shock phase, another strong man decided he wanted to no longer be on the bad side of the West. What did he do?

On December 19, 2003, long-time Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi stunned much of the world by renouncing Tripoli’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs and welcoming international inspectors to verify that Tripoli would follow through on its commitment.

Following Gaddafi’s announcement, inspectors from the United States, United Kingdom, and international organizations worked to dismantle Libya’s chemical and nuclear weapons programs, as well as its longest-range ballistic missiles. Washington also took steps toward normalizing its bilateral relations with Tripoli, which had essentially been cut off in 1981.

Libya’s decision has since been characterized as a model for other states suspected of developing WMD in noncompliance with their international obligations to follow. Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control Stephen Rademaker stated May 2, 2005 during the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference that Libya’s choice “demonstrates that, in a world of strong nonproliferation norms, it is never too late to make the decision to become a fully compliant NPT state,” noting that Tripoli’s decision has been “amply rewarded.”

And what did Gadaffi get for his efforts?

...a jerky three minutes and more shot by fighter Ali Algadi on his iPhone and acquired by a website, the Global Post – that describes those moments in the most detail. A dazed and confused Gaddafi is led from the drain where he was captured, bleeding heavily from a deep wound on the left side of his head, from his arm, and, apparently, from other injuries to his neck and torso, staining his tunic red with blood. He is next seen on the ground, surrounded by men with weapons shouting “God is great” and firing in the air, before being lifted on to a pickup truck as men around him shout that the ruler for more than four decades should be “kept alive”.

There are other clips that complete much of the story: Gaddafi slumped on a pickup truck, face smeared with blood, apparently unconscious; Gaddafi shirtless and bloody on the ground surrounded by a mob; Gaddafi dead in the back of an ambulance. What is not there is the moment of his death – and how it happened – amid claims that he was killed by fighters with a shot to the head or stomach. By Friday, the day after he died, the body of the former dictator once so feared by his Libyan opponents was facing a final indignity – being stored on the floor of a room-sized freezer in Misrata usually used by restaurants and shops to keep perishable goods.

When the usual suspects wonder why people like Assad hold on so long, they should perhaps ask themselves what they and their friends at Davos and Munich have messaged to the bad players in the world over the last couple of decades or so.

Trust is a hard currency. 

A bunch of smug people looking for scalps and headlines have spent their currency and then some - and then wonder why no one is interested in doing business with them.

Gadaffi of Milošević in their time knew that even Idi Amin was left in peace to die of old age in Saudi Arabia.

What does Assad see? 

Willing to bet your life on the EU?

The European Continental internationalists are realizing that it is too hard to try to convince the USA to lead NATO in another dragon hunt, they are looking to ... the EU?

I'm glad I don't have to brief that CJSOR fill.

More ponderings over at USNIBlog.

Come by and give it a read.

Syria: a Festival of Bad Options

Time to quote myself from 2013 with regards to the Syrian Civil War;

However one comes to, "Syria; not our fight" - I frankly don't care. Besides a little culling of the herd, punitive expedition, and trying to mitigate the nasty-bits of the Syrian government's arsenal moving around - we have no reason to do anything more militarily directly in that nation.

If any nation should invade and occupy Syria, it should be Turkey. If Turkey did, should we support them? Of course - but in about the way we supported the Europeans in Libya. No more, perhaps less. Throw a few drones and TLAM as needed? Sure. Fine with me. Any more? Foolish.

If Syria isn't worth an Anatolian shepherd's son - it sure isn't worth John Smith from Des Moines, Iowa.

There is a cost from backing away from being the World Policeman ... and I'm OK with that.

Then, the Islamic State took root in the chaos of the Syrian Civil War and our less than ideal early withdraw from Iraq during the Obama Administration.

While the Obama Administration was wise to keep out of Syria's civil war, they did not appreciate the threat that ISIS would become.

What was one of their hopes to counter ISIS?

Turkey.

As our former chief diplomat in Syria Robert Ford outlined in 2015 when the Islamic State was large and growing:

“It is time for President Assad [and] the Assad regime to put their people first and to think about the consequences of their actions, which are attracting more and more terrorists to Syria,” Secretary of State John F. Kerry said Jan. 14.

If the administration has a diplomatic strategy, it centers on cajoling countries that have influence in Syria — Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey — to join in a combined effort to end the conflict. The premise is that those countries fear Islamic State and other jihadists enough to put aside their otherwise deep divisions. But that's a long way from happening too.

Until then, the U.S. strategy boils down to attacking Islamic State from the air, hoping a war of attrition somehow weakens Assad's grip on power, and asking Turkey (and perhaps others) to act on the ground where the United States has been unwilling.

“Our problem is that we don't have much leverage,” Ford noted. “We have put very little skin in the game. The Russians and Iranians have put a lot of skin in the game.”

And that offers little ground for optimism. The lesson of our misadventure in Syria may be this: A risk-averse foreign policy can keep you out of ground wars — but it can also keep other goals out of reach too.

Turkey was not so interested in fighting the Islamic State per se ... but they are interested in what they see as a real threat to their national security - Kurds. Turkey is all about Turkey. Everyone knows that. We seem to misread that on a regular basis, but there it is.

OK, we've reviewed the history here. What about today?

The Trump Administration’s decision to withdraw from the northern part of Syria was announced and executed in an exceptionally clunky method. Plenty of blame there for both the civilian and military sides of the house – but it is defendable for a host of reasons.

First of all, if you don’t understand the connection between the Marxist YPG and PKK, then sit down and be quiet.

Second, if you don’t know the difference between Syrian and Iraqi Kurds or the geography of the area, sit down and be quiet longer.

Third, if you are real excited – the YPG has international brigades. Grab your passport and good luck.

For the adults in the room, you have to look at options.

We have choices, none of which are ideal but guess what? Nothing has been ideal in that part of the world since recorded time.

Look at why we put boots on the ground in Syria to start with. Do you remember what ISIS was doing in their caliphate? Catch up here if you need to.

We needed to remove them from Iraq and chase them down to their last sanctuaries in Syria. We smartly decided to use the method that works well in that area, find the enemy of your enemy and make them your friend. We did that, and together we accomplished the end state we both wanted.

The Islamic State’s Operational Center of Gravity has been defeated; their holding of large swaths of territory in Syria and Iraq. Their Strategic Center of Gravity, their religious justification for existing, can only be defeated by the Islamic world. We are, at best, a supporting entity there.

Of course ISIS is also a terrorist organization and in that mode it can continue for decades. A different challenge.

Of course there are prisons full of ISIS detainees in Syria who are either stateless or their nations of origin, like Germany, will not take them back. In that part of the world in similar conflicts, that was not a problem … and you know why. Tertiary issue.

So, what are our options? None are good, but we have options.

1. Garrison N. Syria until the crack of doom and hope that nothing stupid will take place that will lead to a wider conflict with the resident population or worse, Turkey, Russia, or Iran over a part of the world we have no ethnic, economic, historical, or religious reason to have any concern over.

2. Have a small garrison deep in the sovereign territory of a nation whose permission we don’t have to be there until the locals come to an arrangement on their own that we are not a part of, and overnight everyone has become an antibody to our foreign presence forcing a humiliating withdraw through … where exactly? Has no one this century read Xenophon?

3. Make a decision that with the major threat gone, the Islamic State’s Caliphate, that we should go home on our terms and our timetable before we get caught up in some long simmering local conflict that is using the umbrella of our protection to renew traditional grievances.

4. We propose an international peace conference in Geneva where we have the USA, FRA, SRY, RUS, IRN, IRQ and the major Kurdish factions get together to agree to post-conflict terms.

We are doing a version of 3. I don’t think 1 or 2 are smart options. I think option 4 only sounds good in faculty lounges, the permanent FP nomenklatura who see wonderful rent seeking job security here, or on Earth 2 where this might actually work.

Our partners of convenience (YPG) is a partner with a terrorist organization (PKK) that threatens a treaty ally on whose nation we have thousands of military personnel and family members, aircraft, and nuclear weapons stationed on. With the major threat gone, it is only natural that Turkey will adjust their tolerance of a threat to their security – a comparable one we would not suffer long on the Mexican or Canadian border. If you don’t like that calculus, then first you need to get our nukes out of Turkey, then our military personnel, and then Turkey out of NATO. If you do that, then I will entertain arguments why our military should stand against the military of Turkey over a bit of territory that was, for centuries until 100 years ago, Turkish. No promises I will agree with you, but I will entertain arguments.

As a final note, if you wonder about my thoughts across administrations on Syria, please click the tag below. It’s all there. Facts changed over time that make some comments OBE, but I stand by it all.

We've met our End State; let the locals work it out in N. Syria

I can argue both sides, but if the option is to garrison N. Syria until the crack of doom, or let Turks, Persians, Babylonians, Israelis, Kurds, and Arabs do with each other what they have been doing since the dawn of civilization in that area without our help, I'll go with the later.

Here is the statement from the White House Sunday night.

Syria has never been in the USA's sphere of influence. The Kurds cannot hide behind the USA forever and we cannot house and feed the European based captured ISIS fighters forever.

Unless you support our forces there indefinitely, then accept that there will never be a good time to leave. If there is never a good time, then the best time is now.

We met our End State. Go home.  

I know empire is a habit, time to start breaking it.

GWOT Fatigue Isn't Just an American Thing

While we are looking at things from an European POV so far this week, let's take a look at the Long War from a French front-line leader's perspective.

We've all felt his frustration. We, as in the West, are exceptionally casualty shy. We are willing to trade time for fewer deaths on our side. 

We will use our comparative advantage in air power and indirect fire as much as possible before putting infantry on the ground.

This "low investment/slow reward" strategy is not without its dangers though. We can lose patience, and the enemy can gain good PR by looking to be able to hold out longer than they otherwise would.

Let's head over to RFI. It is in French, so you will pardon this rough translation;

The commander of the French gunners supporting the Kurdish forces against the Islamic State (IS) group in Syria claims that the victory could have been achieved faster and with less destruction if the Westerners had hired troops on the ground.

Colonel François-Régis Legrier, who has been in charge since October of the French artillery detachment (Task Force Wagram) in Iraq, makes this scathing statement in an article in the Journal National Defense (RDN) which makes the teeth cringe Staff of the armies.

The last major battle against ISIS, fought from September to December in the Hajine pocket in eastern Syria, " was won, but at a very slow pace , at an exorbitant cost and at the cost of many destructions, " says the officer.

IS jihadists now only hold a square kilometer plot in Deir Ezzor province (east) near the Iraqi border. And US President Donald Trump assured Friday that announcements would intervene " within 24 hours " on the end of the " caliphate " self-proclaimed.

" Of course, Westerners, by refusing to engage troops on the ground, have limited the risks and in particular that of having to explain to the public, " notes Colonel Legrier. " But this refusal questions: why maintain an army that one does not dare to engage? "Continues the officer, who uses an unprecedented freedom of speech for a military officer in operation.

According to him, 1,000 seasoned fighters would have been enough to " settle in a few weeks the fate of Hajine's pocket and (to) spare the population several months of war ". It took " almost five months and an accumulation of destruction to defeat 2,000 fighters with no air support, electronic warfare, special forces, or satellites, " he said.

If Col. Legrier's AOR sounds familiar to Front Porch regulars, it is because he leads the French unit that we talked about, in part, with Col. Seth Folsom, USMC eight months ago.

If you missed it the first time, give it a listen now.

Ending 2018 with a Feh

Going through my weekly stack of unread mail this weekend, I came across my annual statement from the VA. I overshot the “to file” stack and it fell on the floor. It landed face down, and that gave me an opportunity to review something I have not looked at in a long time; the definition of The Long War.

We all need a reference point. Most, including myself, usually use September 2001 as the starting point, but that never really seemed right. Perhaps the VA is closer to the correct answer.

Sure, this is more just a reflection of the Legislative and Executive Branches’ inability to effectively do their job, but there is a bit of truth to this.

02 AUG 1990 is when the VA says the war we are still in started. Over 28 years ago.

Here is where, in a way, things have come full circle.

As we got ready for 2QFY91’s DESERT STORM, you know who we fought along side during the liberation of Kuwait? Of note, they were held in reserve, but in actuality, neither they nor the Egyptians in this part of the line had much enthusiasm for the fight and mostly refused to engage when they were needed most. However, there they were.

And what did we see over the weekend?

The Unites States, France, and Great Britain standing shoulder to shoulder with the Syrian army against Turkish aggression.

What has changed since 1990? Well, besides Iran being the boogie man, a lot.

One of the foundation reasons for the Gulf War, the free flow of oil (to us) at market prices, has changed significantly; in North America, we are completely self-sufficient with oil. We have an inertia to our policy and we have managed to tangle ourselves in that areas internal problems to the point that we are policing internal Syrian security against another NATO ally. So, we’re still there and will be for … who knows – 2046?

And so, my final post of 2018 looks back at 1990 and thinks, “We’ve really got ourselves in a mess this time, didn’t we?”

On Mattis

First of all, this Christmas Eve, regardless of your confession I wish all peace and happiness. 

As we are all busy, I'll just cut to the chase.

Last Thursday I offered a few points on Syria, and I guess I should make a few points about Secretary Mattis's departure as well.

Slightly modified from some comments I made SEPCOR, here is the Executive Summary:

We're all going to be just fine. I've been a Mattis guy since 2001, but SECDEF is a position for a politician, not a Field Marshall. Even though I have 100% trust in him for any position he may find himself in, Mattis was never quite well suited for the position of SECDEF as it was designed. He had to get a waiver for a reason. I am still a Mattis guy and I wish him well.

As for who should replace him, anyone who can get a nod from the Senate and will continue to promote what Trump has been doing and I have been honking about since Bush43: 
(1) decouple from being the world's policeman, 
(2) get our NATO allies to pull their fair share of the load. 2% isn't exactly asking for a lot.

Again, we're fine. 
- We are mostly in the Middle East due to strategic inertia and to tidy up problems generally of our own creation. We don't need their oil anymore. 
- While our debt issues are huge, we are in better shape than any other major nation on the planet. When the music stops, the world will groan, but we will hurt less than almost anyone else. 
- We feed ourselves. 
- Our entire hemisphere is of zero threat to us. 
- The only real global challenger we have will be China  and we have absolutely ZERO reason to have a land dispute with them on mainland Asia. Any conflict will - if we are smart about it - be mostly an air and sea conflict for us, with any land force hopefully limited to islands.

What we don't need is an expanded universe of nations and regions we are garrisoning in order to secure their peace at the cost of increasing the threat of possible war for us over things that are none of our business.

Specifically WRT Syria, I've said it a hundred and I'll say it a million times; if it were so important to secure - the area of the West most negatively impacted by the Syrian civil war would have a string of divisions lining the eastern banks of the Euphrates - the Europeans. You see a sprinkling of French there (the former colonial power), but that is about it.

It is only our circus and our monkeys if we stay long enough. Time to go. If we need to come back and break more things and kill more people for a few months, then fine - we'll do it.

I can argue the other side of the argument as well ... but I frankly don't care to any more. I save that energy for IRQ and AFG.

Operation Inherent Dissolve

My position on intervention in the Syrian Civil War has been roughly consistent. You can click the Syria tab below if you so wish to review back to 2012, or for the executive summary you can read PLAN SALAMANDER from SEP 2015 or Rev. 1 of JUN 2017 later here.

For those in a hurry, here it is; Syria has never been in the USA orbit. As long as her civil war does not impact our national interests, what happens there is not our business as primary lead.

That changed when the Islamic State set up their Caliphate. As we did in Iraq, we partnered with the most reliable native ground force opposing them. In Syria, we rightfully decided that we would eliminate ISIS from the Euphrates valley and east to the Iraqi border. The rest of Syrian territory would be the concern of the Syrians themselves and their allies. The Syrian government was and is, without question, the only non-Kurdish force in Syria that protected religious minority Christians and Druse (being led by a minority Shia sect themselves). Our interests overlap.

Outside a small pocket, the Islamic State’s Caliphate is gone. The local forces are in a position to deal with them from here and to work out a post-civil war arrangement with the Syrian government.

That is it. Our Objectives and End States have been achieved. Full stop. Let’s go home before some underemployed good idea fairy comes up with a Sequel Plan.

We are a republic, not an empire. It is neither our responsibility or requirement to garrison the entire world to make them behave themselves. When we do that, we are rarely good at it. In the post WWII era, at best we create a chain of frozen conflicts – at worst we lose or create the conditions for future conflict. We have very few successful adventures. Off the top of my head, I can think of Grenada. DESERT STORM seems a “win” but with hindsight of follow-on events, perhaps not. We can call it a draw.

It is one thing to take chances when your direct national security is threatened, it is another “just because in the short run you can.”

Watching the responses today to President Trump’s announcement of our with drawal would be amusing if not so infuriating. The easiest to understand are the usual suspects from the “invade the world” nation building school who want nothing else than to send the American people to force people to be something they don’t want or know how to be at the point of a gun. They can’t help themselves. They mean well.

The worst are the pure political who, if anyone else but Trump were president, would be praising the withdraw. They are throwing stones just because they don’t want to be seen saying anything positive about Trump.

Those people need to pray on their actions.

Regular readers know my feelings about Trump going back to 2015. No reason to review. I have no problem calling balls and strikes – and this is a strike. A bit sloppy in execution, looks goofy on the slo-mo replay, not how I would do it - but a clear strike.

Yes, one can make an argument that ISIS is not totally dead, but that isn’t the point. Our primary responsibility was to eliminate the Caliphate’s ground possessions. We have effectively done that. A secondary goal was to reinforce the Kurds. We have and will continue to effectively do that within certain conditions.

It is not our responsibility to force an agreement with the Assad government. It is not our responsibility to police Syria. It is not our responsibility to dictate who the Assad government derives their support from. It is almost 2019. That Decision Point passed us by a half-decade ago.

What should we continue to do? Provide support as needed to the Kurds and any of our allies who decide they want to stay and sweep up ISIS remainders. We can do that from Iraq. Iraq we need to keep a presence in. There we have responsibilities that are not complete. We can help form a blocking force from Iraq and let the Syrians of all factions deal with the remains of ISIS as fits their local custom. We should have no problem striking the odd ISIS target if it pleases us, but that is about it.

What about the Russians? Russia has a long standing interest in Syria – even pre-dating the Soviet Union. Let them have their naval base. Not our business.

What about the Turks? We should make it clear that they should not be in the business of snatching land in Syria like Russia is in Ukraine. If they do, warn. If that doesn’t work – if we haven’t on the sly done it already – pull our NATO nukes out of the country. If that doesn’t work – kick them out of NATO. Between the direction they are going politically internally – they no longer seem interested in being Western anyway.

I would offer this to those who think the above is bunk; tell me why we need to stay in Syria until the crack of doom? What direct national interest does that serve? Is that worth the expenditure of blood, treasure, and creating the conditions for some damn stupid think to happen between USA and Russian or Turkish forces?
To what end? For what gain?

If Syria’s civil war is of such importance, then let those who will be most impacted by it – the Europeans – take care of what is in their back yard. They French have a good start, let others join them. If none do, then perhaps it is not the threat some here make it out to be.

We are a republic, not an empire.

What did a great man say?

The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop. Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none; or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.

Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course. If we remain one people under an efficient government. the period is not far off when we may defy material injury from external annoyance; when we may take such an attitude as will cause the neutrality we may at any time resolve upon to be scrupulously respected; when belligerent nations, under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon us, will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation; when we may choose peace or war, as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel.

Why forego the advantages of so peculiar a situation? Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor or caprice?

We have done enough. It has been a good punitive expedition. Should the Islamic State raise another Caliphate there or elsewhere, and then let us talk again if it warrants action on our part in conjunction with other. Let us not now make a decision to establish yet another garrison which, at the end of this century, our great grandchildren will be asked to defend.

---

Update: It appears that SECDEF Mattis will be leaving in February of 2019. History will tell us if this was the last straw. Perhaps it was. I will miss Mattis.

End the Syrian Civil War Before Mistakes are Made

It is time to let the Syrians and Russians clean things up west of the Euphrates.

More reasons why over at USNIBlog.

hat tip Sid. Map graphic scwm.

They Syrian End Game

And so, we reach the last couple of chapters in the bloody Syrian Civil War - that place where Game of Thrones intersects on the ground with a Monty Python sketch on the diplomatic scene.

The more interesting, and potentially most deadly, part of this chapter is in the tri-border region where Israel, Jordan, and Syria come together. Not to diminish the impacted sh1t-show the Turks created in the northwest or the throbbing presence of the Kurdish held east ... but you have the hammer of the Syrian coalition against the Israeli anvil and the weak spot at the Jordanian border.

A bit more than a year ago, I issued the D&G for Rev. 1 to PLAN SALAMANDER, and so far it appears the commanders on the ground are successfully executing the plan. Once again, here it is bulletized for ease of reading.

1. Let the Iranians and Russians kill Sunni Arab Islamists in the west of Syria while we kill them in the east. (no change)

2. We'll kill them east of the Euphrates to include those portions west of the Euphrates in the Raqqa Governorate. and south of road from Nassib in the southwest, through Damascus to Deir ez-Zur on the Euphrates.

3. The Russians, Syrians, and Iranian proxies can kill them in the rest. (no change)

4. We will continue to support Kurdish and allied forces inside the area defined in #2 using airpower and advisory liaison forces as needed. Once they are done in the north and west, we can just do CAS for the Kurds on the front lines of their frontier as we all push IS forces in to the Iraqi desert.

As always, SyriaCivilWarMap gives you much of what you need to know.

This is what you need to watch; many of the non-ISIS rebels may be able to negotiate their way in to some kind of end. ISIS though, no. No chance. They will either be killed in place or will have to find a way to drift in to Jordan. Are the Jordanians ready to keep them out? Can they keep them out?

This is all very interesting to watch. 

Once that pocket it taken care of, forces can move to get rid of that pocket in on the Iraqi border. After that, Iblid next. 

The Kurds will continue to nibble away at the other ISIS remnants. 

Here is when things will get fuzzy. How will the Syrians deal with the Kurds? What about the Turkish enclave west of Manbij?

With all these known-unknowns, there we have American and Russian forces, keeping an eye on each other when they're not giving the Turks side-eye and the finger to the Iranians.

So much that must be done right, so many places for things to go wrong.

https://syriancivilwarmap.com/

The Syrian Civil War: the Difference a Year Makes

Last week, the Assad government finally took control of their capital with the removal of the ISIS pocket around the Palestinian camp.

Amazing what can happen in a year. From Syria Civil War Map, two graphics that tell the story better and 5,000 words.

Area under control or influence in Syria
Infogram

Population under control of each Faction in % (Extrapolation based on pre-war population) June
Infogram

The USS Donald Cook (DDG 75) Gets Her Revenge

Though she didn't fire a shot in anger in the latest Syrian strikes, everyone on the DONALD COOK should have a little zip in their step, they did something just as important - and satisfying.

Since she showed up in Rota, Spain in 2014 as one of our forward deployed BMD destroyers, she's has made a good show of the flag through the Med, Baltic, and Black Sea. The Russians took a liking to her as some kind of punching bag to make a point for INFO OPS or PSYOPS reasons.

First in April of 2014,

A Russian fighter aircraft made repeated low-altitude, close-range passes near a U.S. ship in the Black Sea over the weekend, the Pentagon said on Monday, condemning the action at a time of heightened U.S.-Russian tensions over Ukraine.

“This provocative and unprofessional Russian action is inconsistent with their national protocols and previous agreements on the professional interaction between our militaries,” said Colonel Steve Warren, a Pentagon spokesman.

Warren said a Russian Su-24 aircraft, or Fencer, made 12 passes at low altitude near the USS Donald Cook, a destroyer that has been in the Black Sea since April 10. It appeared to be unarmed, he told reporters.

The incident lasted 90 minutes and took place on Saturday evening while the U.S. ship was conducting a patrol in international waters in the western Black Sea, Warren said. The ship is now in a Romanian port.

...and then again in 2016 another little air show in the Baltic;

The US military released videos and photos showing Russian Sukhoi SU-24 attack aircraft flying across the bow of the destroyer in the latest of many recent cases the White House said were unsafe and unprofessional.

"There have been repeated incidents over the past year where the Russian military, including Russian military aircraft, have come close enough ... to other air and sea traffic to raise serious safety concerns," spokesman Josh Earnest said.

"This incident ... is entirely inconsistent with the professional norms of militaries operating in proximity to each other in international water and international airspace."

Ha, ha Ivan, you insecure bully. You'll get yours.

Patience. All it took was patience.

Somewhere there is a planner out there we all owe a beer to that gave the DONALD COOK her revenge;

In April of last year, two US Navy destroyers in the eastern Mediterranean steamed into the region, let off 59 cruise missiles in response to gas attacks by the Syrian government, and left unpunished and unpursued.

But this time, with the US considering its response to another attack against civilians blamed on the Syrian government, Russian officials threatened to shoot down US missiles, and potentially the ships that launched them, if they attacked Syria. A retired Russian admiral spoke candidly about sinking the USS Donald Cook, the only destroyer in the region.

When the strike happened early Saturday morning local time, the Cook didn't fire a shot, and a source told Bloomberg News it was a trick.

Instead, a US submarine, the USS John Warner, fired missiles while submerged in the eastern Mediterranean, presenting a much more difficult target than a destroyer on the surface. Elsewhere, a French frigate let off three missiles.

But the bulk of the firing came from somewhere else entirely: the Red Sea.

I don't know what, "Give DONALD COOK a call, they have your jock." is in Russian ... but Russia, the DONALD COOK has your jock - and the last laugh.

As a side-note, you know how the submarine bubbas will run up a Jolly Roger when they do a Special Operations mission or somesort? Well, this epic troll/PSYOPS deserves something new. The crew of the DONALD COOK needs to get a big troll flag to run up her mast for when she comes back to port.

Hat tip SJS, EM Simpson, & Herb.

Watching Syria? I hope so.

If you have not already, you should have a short list of reliable sources of information on what is going on in Syria.

Over at USNIBlog I'm making a recommendation. Check it out and add it to your list.

NB: USNIBlog seems to be having trouble. Check back in later when they have it fixed.

Turkey Moves in the Syrian Civil War in Afrin, With Michael Goodyear

As the Islamic State Caliphate's territory in Syria is shrinking to just a few isolated pockets, rebel force opposing Assad lose more an more ground, and Kurdish led forces solidify lines, another chapter in the Syrian civil war is about to begin.

Time will tell, but the Turkish move in to Afrin may have been the opening.

What is Turkey trying to accomplish, and how does this complicate the interest of the Kurds and their American, French and other partners, Russians, Iranians, and the Syrians supporting Assad?

For the full hour this Sunday from 5-6pm Eastern our guest to examine this question and related issues will be Michael Goodyear.

Michael is a law student at the University of Michigan Law School and holds degrees in History and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from the University of Chicago. His research focuses on the history, culture, and politics of the Balkans and the northern Middle East.

As a starting point for our conversation, we will reference his recent article in Small Wars Journal, Paradigm Shift in Syria After Afrin.

Join us live if you can, but if you miss the show you can always listen to the archive at blogtalkradio or Stitcher. 

If you use iTunes, you can add Midrats to your podcast list simply by clicking the iTunes button at the main showpage - or you can just click here.

In Syria, both the USA and Russia Can Win

As the end game – whatever that might wind of looking like – in Syria is getting closer, we are seeing a lot of tonal disconnect between what the world is, and what some people think it should be. Clear thinking is being side-stepped for The Narrative;all things that are not in aligned to The Narrative must be warped to fit in it.

The source of much of the disconnect involves Russia. Russia, that wonderfully peculiar nation, once again finds itself being used by others in our crass and petty domestic politics, warping our international perspective and preventing clear understanding of what is in play.

Even our best and brightest are caught up in an unnecessary lack of  consensus and are strewing about a theme of a nation's natsec community embarrassingly lacking seriousness and continuity.

I don't think Russia is that good, I just think we've become too petty. 

We’ve gone from the early Obama’s administration’s “Bush43 was unnecessarily rough on you Russia, we need a “reset” (nee overload) of our relationship…” to the mid-Obama collusion, “Tell Vladimir I will have more flexibility after the election” and "the 1980s called" silliness to the post 2016 “Ermergherd, Russia!” squid ink that is clouding everyone’s thinking in the beltway. Trump's Russia policy? The O2 is being soaked up in a failed probe and a pouting establishment to the point that serious people can't get airtime.

We've turned a standard issue Russian INFO OPS campaign that they play during all democratic elections in my lifetime, in to something way out of proportion to what it actually is. As if we are actively trying to help the Russians, we've empowered their mischievousness way beyond their wildest exceptions ... mostly for petty domestic politics.


Sadly, our click-bait focused media isn't looking for serious people to come on and talk like adults. Instead we get the tin-foil types, partisanship-uber-alles types, and the unhinged.

There is a group of people out there who do get it.  Thankfully this fever isn’t impacting the professionals from all sides of the political aisle who kept an eye on Eternal Russia for decades. 

This group did not join the natsec cats chasing the latest fad's laser pointer while spewing buzzwords … but they are hard to find in the chaos. Our national dialog about Russia is clouded by the click-bait and cats, and it is not a benign clouding. It is birthing bad and dangerous ideas.

Not an extreme case, but you can see the clouding in the response you can find to the Army University Press's Military Review, article by Michael Kofman and Matthew Rojansky. 

The authors have done good work here, but for some reason smart people think that if Russia gets a win, that is somehow bad for the USA. The authors are not really making that case, but some are taking it that way. 

You can get a vibe in the article of an ill-comfort with Russia possibly getting a win - but not that bad. It is enough for others to start to focus on that.

Russia getting a "W" in Syria is not necessarily a bad thing for the USA.  

No, not really. Look at all the possible outcomes of the Syrian Civil War. Rack and stack them. We actually are not in that bad of a spot in a sea of bad spots. In such a bloody civil war, our intervention has not cost us much blood, nor in relative terms, treasure. Russia has her own goals, we have ours. As long as we deconflict, we should be OK.

Back to the article. Read it all, but here's what caught my eye;

While it is far from assured that any settlement acceptable to the principle domestic and international players can be struck, for now the main outcome of this war is that President Bashar al-Assad will stay, but the Syria that existed before the war is gone.

The natural question is whether Russia has, in fact, won a victory. The answer to that question depends first on what Moscow intended to achieve—in other words, how did and does Russia define victory in Syria, what are its continuing interests there, and have those interests been secured or advanced?
...
In sum, Russia appears to have won at least a partial victory in Syria, and done so with impressive efficiency, flexibility, and coordination between military and political action. On the one hand, Russia’s embrace of the Assad regime and its Iranian allies, its relative indifference to civilian casualties, and its blanket hostility to antiregime opposition groups are fundamentally at odds with widely held U.S. views on Syria. On the other hand, Russia’s “lean” strategy, adaptable tactics, and coordination of military and diplomatic initiatives offer important lessons for the conduct of any military intervention in as complex and volatile an environment as the Middle East. More than a decade and a half into the U.S. involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, with ongoing fighting in Libya and Yemen, and countless other tinderboxes that could ignite wider regional conflict threatening U.S. interests, Washington should pay close attention to the Russian intervention and how Moscow achieved its objectives in Syria.

There is no reason why Russia can't call a "win" in Syria and at the same time the USA can't call a "win" in Syria. We had mostly different goals. As long as we respect each other's goals and don't get sucked in to undermining each other, we should be good to go.

The Operational Center of Gravity for ISIS was their capital. We along with our allies (mostly Kurd) have taken that. 

ISIS's Strategic Center of Gravity is the religious foundation of their existence. Only the Muslim world will be able to take care of that - but taking care of this major operation is a critical step in that direction, and about all we can directly do.

As we've outlined here for years, there is only one significant interest the USA has in Syria; the elimination of the Islamic State's caliphate and the extermination of as many of their fighters we find on the battlefield. We are almost there. Russia's goals overlap some of ours. Others we really shouldn't care about.

Syria has never been in our sphere of influence. It actually has been in the Russian (nee Soviet) sphere of influence if anyone's (honorable mention to France & Turkey). 

Syria has never been a friend. With the exception of fighting along side of us during DESERT STORM, they have been a problem best managed to the side. Who does or does not run that mixed up chunk of land is of secondary importance to us.

We have almost completely achieved what we need to achieve in Syria. As they provided the balance of the ground forces for us to achieve our goals, we need to make sure that whatever post-war settlement is made, the Kurds are respected. We have to do that or we may have trouble getting allies in the future. After killing a few hundred Russian mercenaries last month, I think we've made our point for Russia to stay on her side of the sandbox. 

The Turks, as is there nature, have complicated things recently. The French, to their great credit, have moved to block our mutual NATO ally to the NW, while we should help enforce the Kurd’s frontier to the center and south as we clean up what remains of Islamic State territory. From there, it is up to the warring parties to work out the post-war details. Lines are starting to stabilize. That is one of the requirements for parties to come to the table.

Where can it go wrong? So many places, but the worst thing we can do is to feel that we can't call a win unless Russia has to call a loss, or the other way around.

Nothing in Syria is worth a wider war. It makes no strategic sense, and the American people have no appetite for it.

If you simply cannot see the nuance required to get a "good enough" in Syria, stop studying the Cold War and start watching Game of Thrones.

NB: If you have not already, click the "Syria" tab and review PLAN SALAMANDER and PLAN SALAMANDER Rev.(1).

Hat tip Tom Ricks.