[Peace-discuss] What the US is doing in Syria

[C. G. Estabrook]

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan never saw it coming.

He knew he was in trouble when the Pentagon leaked that the Turkish  
Phantom RF-4E shot down last week by Syrian anti-aircraft artillery  
happened off the Syrian coastline, directly contradicting Erdogan's  
account, who claimed it happened in international air space.

And it got worse; Moscow, via Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, offered  
"objective radar data" as proof.

There was not much to do except change the subject. That's when Ankara  
introduced a de facto buffer zone of four miles (6.4km) along the  
Syrian-Turkish border - now enforced by F-16s taking off from NATO's  
Incirlik base at regular intervals.

Ankara also dispatched tanks, missile batteries and heavy artillery to  
the 500 mile (800km) border, right after Erdogan effectively branded  
Syria "a hostile state".

What next? Shock and awe? Hold your (neo-Ottoman) horses.

Lord Balfour, I presume?

The immediate future of Syria was designed in Geneva recently, in one  
more of those absurdist "international community" plays when the US,  
Britain, France, Turkey and the Gulf Cooperation Council's Qatar and  
Kuwait sat down to devise a "peaceful solution" for the Syrian drama,  
even though most of them are reportedly weaponising the opposition to  
Damascus.

One would be excused to believe it was all back to the Balfour  
Declaration days, when foreign powers would decide the fate of a  
country without the merest consultation of its people, who, by the  
way, never asked them to do it on their behalf.

Anyway, in a nutshell: there won't be a NATO war on Syria - at least  
for now. Beyond the fact that Lavrov routinely eats US Secretary of  
State Hillary Clinton for breakfast, Russia wins - for now.

Predictably, Moscow won't force regime change on Assad; it fears the  
follow-up to be the absolute collapse of Syrian state machinery, with  
cataclysmic consequences. Washington's position boils down to  
accepting a very weak, but not necessarily out, Assad.

The problem is the interpretation of "mutual consent", on which a  
"transitional government" in Syria would be based - the vague  
formulation that emerged in Geneva. For the Obama administration, this  
means Assad has to go. For Moscow - and, crucially, for Beijing - this  
means the transition must include Assad.

Expect major fireworks dancing around the interpretation. Because a  
case can be made that the new "no-fly zone" over Libya - turned by  
NATO into a 30,000-sortie bombing campaign - will become Syria's  
"transitional government", based on "mutual consent".

One thing is certain: nothing happens before the US presidential  
election in November. This means that for the next five months or so  
Moscow will be trying to extract some sort of "transitional  
government" from the bickering Syrian players. Afterwards, all bets  
are off. A Washington under Mitt Romney may well order NATO to attack  
in early 2013.

A case can be made that a Putin-Obama or US-Russia deal may have been  
reached even before Geneva.

Russia has eased up on NATO in Afghanistan. Then there was the highly  
choreographed move of the US offering a formal apology and Pakistan  
duly accepting it - thus reopening NATO's supply routes to Afghanistan.

It's crucial to keep in mind that Pakistan is an observer and  
inevitable future full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation  
(SCO) - run by China and Russia, both BRICS members highly interested  
in seeing the US and NATO out of Afghanistan for good.

The "price" paid by Washington is, of course, to go easy on Damascus -  
at least for now. There is not much Erdogan can do about it; he really  
was not in the loop.

Keep the division of labour intact

So here's the perverse essence of Geneva: the (foreign) players agreed  
to disagree - and to hell with Syrian civilians caught in the civil  
war crossfire.

In the absence of a NATO attack, the question is how the Assad system  
may be able to contain or win what is, by all practical purposes, a  
foreign-sponsored civil war.

Yes, because the division of labour will remain intact. Turkey will  
keep offering the logistical base for mercenaries coming from  
"liberated" Libya, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Lebanon. The House of Saud  
will keep coming up with the cash to weaponise them. And Washington,  
London and Paris will keep fine-tuning the tactics in what remains the  
long, simmering foreplay for a NATO attack on Damascus.

Even though the armed Syrian opposition does not control anything  
remotely significant inside Syria, expect the mercenaries reportedly  
weaponised by the House of Saud and Qatar to become even more  
ruthless. Expect the not-exactly-Free Syrian Army to keep mounting  
operations for months, if not years. A key point is whether enough  
supply lines will remain in place - if not from Jordan, certainly from  
Turkey and Lebanon.

Damascus may not have the power to strike the top Western actors in  
this drama. But it can certainly wreak havoc among the supporting  
actors - as in Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and, of course, Turkey.

Jordan, the weak link, a wobbly regime at best, has already closed off  
supply lines. Hezbollah sooner or later will do something about the  
Lebanese routes. Erdogan sooner or later will have to get real about  
what was decided in Geneva.

Moreover, one can't forget that Saudi Arabia would be willing to fight  
only to the last dead American; it won't risk Saudis to fight Syrians.

As for red alerts about Saudi troops getting closer to southern Syria  
through Jordan, that's a joke. The House of Saud military couldn't  
even defeat the ragtag Houthi rebels in neighbouring Yemen.

A final juicy point. The Russian naval base at Tartus - approximately  
a mere 55 miles (90km) away from where the Panthom RF-4E was shot down  
- now has its radar on 24/7. And it takes just a single Russian  
warship anchored in Syrian waters to send the message; if anyone comes  
up with funny ideas, just look at what happened to Georgia in 2008.

Time to shuffle those cards

Erdogan has very few cards left to play, if any. Assad, in an  
interview with Turkey's Cumhuriyet newspaper, regretted "100 per cent"  
the downing of the RF-4E, and argued, "the plane was flying in an area  
previously used by Israel's air force".

The fact remains that impulsive Erdogan got an apology from wily  
Assad. By contrast, after the Mavi Marmara disaster, Erdogan didn't  
even get an unpeeled banana from Israel.

  Alawite activists flee to Turkey
The real suicidal scenario would be for Erdogan to order another F4- 
style provocation and then declare war on Damascus on behalf of the  
not-exactly-Free Syrian Army. It won't happen. Damascus has already  
proved it is deploying a decent air defence network.

Every self-respecting military analyst knows that war on Syria will be  
light years away from previous "piece of cake" Iraq and Libya  
operations. NATO commanders, for all their ineptitude, know they could  
easily collect full armouries of bloody noses.

As for the Turkish military, their supreme obsession is the Kurds in  
Anatolia, not Assad. They do receive some US military assistance. But  
what they really crave is an army of US drones to be unleashed over  
Anatolia.

Turkey routinely crosses into Northern Iraq targeting Kurdish PKK  
guerrillas accused of killing Turkish security forces.  Now,  
guerrillas based in Turkey are reportedly crossing the border into   
Syria and killing Syrian security forces, and even civilians. It would  
be too much to force Ankara to admit its hypocrisy.

Erdogan, anyway, should proceed with extreme caution. His rough  
tactics are isolating him; more than two-thirds of Turkish public  
opinion is against an attack on Syria.

It's come to the point that Turkish magazine Radikal asked their  
readers whether Turkey should be a model for the new Middle East.  
Turkey used to be "the sick man of Europe"; now Turkey is "becoming  
the lonely man of the Middle East", says the article.

It's a gas, gas, gas

Most of all, Erdogan simply cannot afford to antagonise Russia. There  
are at least 100,000 Russians in Syria - doing everything from  
building dams to advising on the operation of those defence systems.

And then there's the inescapable Pipelineistan angle. Turkey happens  
to be Gazprom's second-largest customer. Erdogan can't afford to  
antagonise Gazprom. The whole Turkish energy security architecture  
depends on gas from Russia - and Iran. Crucially, one year ago a $10bn  
Pipelineistan deal was clinched between Iran, Iraq and Syria for a  
natural gas pipeline from Iran's giant South Pars field to Iraq, Syria  
and further on towards Turkey and eventually connecting to Europe.

During the past 12 months, with Syria plunging into civil war, key  
players stopped talking about it. Not anymore. Any self-respecting  
analyst in Brussels admits that the EU's supreme paranoia is to be a  
hostage of Gazprom. The Iran-Iraq-Syria gas pipeline would be  
essential to diversify Europe's energy supplies away from Russia.

For the US and the EU, this is the real game, and if it takes two or  
more years of Assad in power, so be it. And it must be done in a way  
that does not fully antagonise Russia. That's where reassurances in  
Geneva to Russia keeping its interests intact in a post-Assad Syria  
come in.

No eyebrows should be raised. This is how ultra-hardcore geopolitics  
is played behind closed doors. It remains to be seen whether Erdogan  
will get the message.

--Pepe Escobar 
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