Secretary Kerry Travels Abroad

He’s making it look like the period in which the revolutions in Syria and Egypt will still be self-determining is coming to an end.

In Egypt at any rate. There he sits down with Morsi and the big bourgeoisie, putting the revolution face to face with the counter-revolution. He tells them to patch things up with the International Monetary Fund. It’s good advice.

Then he sits down with some of the representatives of the opposition within the revolution (they are still too fractured all to agree to attend) and tells them, I imagine, that he had already told Morsi to safeguard the rights of women, religious minorities, etc. And maybe those who did attend will be satisfied with that.

Thus Secretary Kerry’s vision for Egyptian unity: sitting down with the parties and making suggestions backed by a relatively few American bucks…as if the revolution had never occurred and was not occurring and they were not, dialectically speaking, mortal enemies.

So it goes when a historically decisive entity decides it would like to impose its will on the self-determinations of a revolution taking place within an entity of the same order, but not the same magnitude. Moreover, as the representative of national capitals, the IMF is a dialectical entity of a different order, but also of great magnitude. It’s a powerful external combination for ending the revolutionary period in Egypt.

In Syria, a decisive act ending the bloody course of self-determination the parties are currently pursuing would be welcome. At least Secretary Kerry is avoiding the Cold War spectacle of two proxy armies, one wielding Russian weapons, the other American, at war with each other while their suppliers watch. I’ve already argued that not arming the Free Syrian Army was a fearful, self-absorbed mistake. At this point, Bashar’s fall would not come years or months from now, but weeks – even if the Russians and Iranians continue to resupply him with ordinance – were the FSA suitably armed. How many Syrians die in a week? in a month? Are their actual victims less precious than the merely putative victims of merely putative terrorism? How many Syrian lives would the Secretary like to throw into this balance?

Because frankly, Al Qaida has no intercontinental reach anymore that I can detect. Maybe the government can detect it. To me, it consists of warlords leading armed gangs, in deserts rather than streets, that hide their bullying and theft behind the mask of a stern religion that ignores several millennia of human progress. And the only people they have killed lately, contrary to their original principles, are mostly Muslims.

Anyway, to paraphrase Churchill, at least it’s a policy, even if it’s wrong. That’s better than the previous Secretary seems to have done. As a policy, it might even lead somewhere.

The Counter-Revolution Speaks

When I got home from the Institute of World Affairs forum at UW-Milwaukee last week, my wife asked me, “Was it good?”

I said, “I’m not sure. I’d have to know who pays his salary before I could tell whether he’s lying or not.” – the salary in question being that of Salah Brahimi, the featured speaker. He’d proven to be well-connected and well-informed, but glib and unprincipled.

Brahimi was billed as a guide to the second Obama administration on questions of policy towards the Arab Spring and the Islamic world in general. But his welter of facts didn’t lead to principles for policy or action. Instead the guidance was to consider fundamentalist elements in the revolutions “toxic” and therefore “fascist.”

Unfortunately, no political philosophy I am aware of defines fascism in terms of toxicity. Maybe the political scientists in the audience could say the same about their discipline. Yet Brahimi calls some of the Islamists fascists for about the same reason a teenager’s parents might be called fascists: he’s unhappy with them.

Equally unfortunately, those were the tactics Brahimi used all evening. Instead of principled, reasoned argument, we heard personal attacks, loaded words, conspiracy theories…

...and false dichotomies. It is not the case that a political system or party that is not recognizably bourgeois and democratic in the Western style must therefore be fascist. Like it or not, the Moslem Brotherhood have made a revolution successfully in Egypt. That they did it in their own behalf – by itself – no more makes them fascists that it makes Mohammed Morsi a candidate to be dictator-for-life. To show that some of their beliefs and policies are “toxic” from the standpoint of Western liberal democracy is not to show that they are putting the elements of a totalitarian state, or a cult of personality, into place. Neither does their failure so far to build a successful state, toxic as that might be, necessarily indicate they have a hidden agenda.

Actually, Brahimi pays his own salary as head of his own consulting firm. He earns it because, as I say, he’s well-connected and well-informed. He also has “friends” in Egypt. But now the question is, who are his clients? If you ask, who would like to discredit Morsi and the Brotherhood, you might get several different answers. But the liberal secular parties in Egypt can’t afford Brahimi’s salary. Mubarak’s old cronies, the ones who paid him for the privilege of looting the Egyptian people for 30 years, can.

The taxpayers of the state of Wisconsin, who fund the Institute, paid Brahimi an honorarium for his services. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is also a sponsor of the forum. Thanks for the coffee! But, or so it seems, he was already being well paid for what he did: tell lies for the counter-revolution in Egypt.

War Correspondents and Other Misnomers

Journalists who know as little about the science of war as those who have been reporting on the Syrian civil war today would likely never have been able to keep a job during World War II. Their ignorance would quickly have been exposed by their peers and their access to reliable sources would equally quickly have dried up. Such individuals apparently do not belong on this “beat.” Almost every report I read on the military events in Syria makes at least one more or less blatant error of this kind. I’ll give two examples in this post.

Just last week, for one example, in a report that the Taftanaz helicopter base had been taken by the opposition, a reporter expressed doubt whether it could be held because the regime continues to make air strikes on rebel positions. I suppose if the pilot of one such plane were to land and raise Bashar’s flag, he could retake the base for the regime. But no! only ground troops can take military possession of places on the ground. Possession of the air above any such space lasts only as long as aircraft are in flight there. It does not extend to the ground below. The notion of air superiority applies only to the conflict of air forces.

The Kosovo war might be considered a counterexample, but it is out of scope here for me fully to explain why it is not.

The other mistake is the repeated denomination of the war as a “stalemate.” It’s not blitzkrieg, but it’s not a stalemate ether. When all the successes are being recorded by one side, all the initiative is on one side, all the striking power is on one side, it’s not a stalemate.

Note that air strikes do not count as “striking power” for the reason explained in example #1. The fact is, the regime has so little striking power on the ground it cannot keep the roads to its garrisons open. That’s why they have had to be supplied by helicopter. But not anymore. Further, if Bashar still had an armored formation capable of taking the initiative, much less carrying out an offensive, even the journalists would have noticed by now. My guess is, whatever he’s got left is being reserved for the gotterdammerung in the capital – and not out of considerations of state, but rather personal ones.

That’s another story. Anyway, these are the two most frequent gaffes of reporters who have no real background or experience to cover a war. Maybe they suffer from not being “embedded.”

Another source of anxious handwringing, and not just among journalists, is the success in battle of the al Qaida-affiliated al Nusra Front. Two observations: one, they’re Muslims killing Muslims. Bin Laden would not approve. Two, they’re not afraid to die. That’s part of the jihadist mentality. The concentration of fire in this war is not, on either side, to all appearances very great. A little bravery goes a long way in Syria if you’re not afraid to expose yourself.

To be sure, they’re auxiliaries fighting for reasons of their own, the way auxiliaries do. But it’s hard to say whether their reasons are ideological or not, or if they are, what that ideology might be. Cyberspace is crowded with inconsistent assertions. We’ve already seen that their actions don’t align with Bin Laden’s vision for al Qaida. If they wanted to restore the Caliphate, wouldn’t they fight for Bashar? That’s his politics, but his economics are consumer, even luxury, oriented. Instead they’ve chosen the side of the freedom fighters, fighters for civil and political rights. Don’t they know that’s a tough atmosphere for al Qaida? That’s what it became in democratic Iraq. That’s the tendency in any country that has a real economy and a real petit bourgeoisie. The list of al Qaida’s temporary successes is limited to places where tribal, and not bourgeois, politics are predominant.

Maybe they just want to participate in violence. If so, that’s what they’ll do in Syria after the civil war, until they’re driven out of Syria too. The middle class is plenty strong there, and was once a bulwark of the regime, until Bashar drove them from his side by his excesses. If they stay and fight, there will be plenty of handwringing about the Muslims they kill during that process too.

For now, they’re an extremely tough, high-morale formation well able to confront and defeat Bashar’s Alawite units. Maybe it’s too bad is it considered risky for the West to arm them properly. But maybe they have been arming themselves.

Morsi shows his hand…

…it’s a revolution based on party, but in his party, class interests are submerged, or at any rate entangled, in religious interests. One can say that, in the end, he might do about as well as Cromwell did.

Which isn’t so bad because, even after the reaction in favor of the Stuart monarchy deprived the Puritans of the state, the Glorious Revolution restored or confirmed their political rights and religious freedom as Dissenters from the state religion. The political solution then reached is still the basis of the British constitutional monarchy.

Other than Cromwell’s, it’s difficult to find examples of revolutions by or in favor of religious parties. Does Lutheranism count? No, because the German princes adopted Lutheranism, really on behalf of their states – it gave them independence from the papacy.

The Huguenots didn’t start as a revolutionary party, but rather as a legitimate party in the Estates-General of France. Though they became involved in a struggle for the state, a struggle that gained them for a time the control of some of the provinces, its grounds were mainly dynastic and factional rather than revolutionary. Yet they, like the Dissenters, numbered many petit bourgeoisie among their faithful.

Other instances match up even less well. The first establishment of the Caliphate was more in the nature of conquest than revolution. It was no more revolution than the Israelites establishing themselves in the Holy Land. Anyhow it’s hard to see how you could have a revolution in favor of anything resembling the Caliphate. Neither did the first Xians aim at control of the state through revolution but rather gained it much later, and not at revolutionary speed but through conversion.

So there’s little guidance from history on the question about the fate of a revolution conducted by a religious party. Now, to show that that is what we are dealing with, I have to show that Morsi has left the path of revolution based on objective class interests. It may also be possible to show that the interests of a religious party as such are not objective in the same sense, if at all – but that would be for another post.

The move to claim vacant or vacated powers was necessary, as I claimed in a post some time ago, to forestall the judiciary, the armed forces already having withdrawn their opposition to the Brotherhood’s revolution and their claim to control of the state. Morsi offered this particular explanation of his action in approximately these terms at one subsequent point. At another point, I seem to recall, he expressed regrets at the appearance of impropriety the appropriation of power gave. Yet the judiciary were prevented from dissolving the constitutional convention in the way they’d dissolved parliament. I believe this, not absolutism, was Morsi’s primary, even his only, aim.

It was not necessary use the appropriated powers to forestall the secular parties, as they had already absented themselves, perhaps not entirely, but sufficient to the purpose, from the process. To the extent Morsi named the Brotherhood and its allies to fill vacant seats and offices, to the extent his original or acquired powers as president were used to stack the convention and control its outcomes, then, he was carrying out the revolution of a religious party, and not a revolution more broadly based on objective class interests.

Nobody ever reported whether Salafists were named to any such vacant seats, the journalists apparently preferring to lump them with the Brotherhood. I have argued that failing to make distinctions on this point is a mistake, and probably an item of Western prejudice, and I am still wondering whether any Salafists had a hand in drafting or approving the constitution, and if so, which if any of their positions were incorporated to it.

So the instrument was hurriedly approved through a process the seculars could not interfere with. And the seculars, having read it, at last found unity, but too late. It’s like what Lenin did to the Kerensky government. It’s like what the German kings did while the German parliament argued with itself after 1848, until the counter-revolution reestablished its state. If the Founding Fathers had conducted themselves the way the secular parties in Egypt have….

Maybe you get my point. There’s a time for talk, but if you’re still talking while another party is taking concrete steps to gain the state, then…you’re free to continue talking after that party becomes the state – maybe. I suppose in this case, since Morsi let them vote, he will also let them talk, if not agitate. The decisive actions have already been taken and the result is what the Brotherhood wanted it to be.

So now the seculars are united, even if only negatively, and they have begun another round of revolutionary agitation. Meanwhile steps are being taken to implement the constitution the people – some of them – voted to adopt. The Shura Council seems to have been given and to be exercising some of the vacant legislative powers, either permanently or during the interim until a new parliament is elected. And they were substantially reappointed by Morsi from his party and in preference both to the minions of the former regime and the seculars – more evidence that the Egyptian revolution has lately been appropriated to the agenda of that religious party.

The seculars thus face an unpleasant choice between trying to get themselves elected under an Islamist constitution, or sitting out the election and trying to make a revolution against the revolution. I guess the French did this a few times during their revolution, but only because it was able, in addition to obliterating the previous regime, to consume itself. I don’t detect that kind of ruthlessness in El Baradei or the people he represents – but who can say?

Revolutions in Review: Syria

I blogged some months ago that it appeared the opposition had been able to force a stalemate with the Syrian regime. Even in a stalemate, Bashar’s days would be numbered. But now it appears the rebels are winning. At any rate, even the journalists can see that at best for Bashar, it’s already a stalemate.

My view can be demonstrated with some confidence by matching up accepted principles of military science with news from the front. Let’s begin with some Che would recognize.

·         The opposition forces have the support of the people in the countryside. This confers several military advantages. For one, they will never starve unless the people themselves are starving. For another, spontaneous, immediate intelligence of enemy movements in the controlled territory. Lastly a source of recruits.

·         They are arming themselves with the weapons of the regime. That is, weapons taken from the soldiers of the regime by movement or combat.

·         They have the initiative against enemy columns penetrating the countryside. The columns are subject to ambush – rather they were subject to ambush. It’s doubtful the regime has sufficient resource to pursue this line of attack – the penetration of opposition-held territory – at all anymore. And this indicates it’s no longer a guerilla war anymore.

All the foregoing has been true for some time now. Which brings us beyond the principles of guerilla warfare to more general principles of military science.

·         Because now the opposition forces have the initiative at the point of attack. That is, not only the ability to attack enemy bases, but also to dictate the strategic focus of combat – I mean the struggle for Aleppo. And this suggests further…

·         …that lines for purely military supplies have been established and are in regular operation. The first step in this direction was to acquire border posts along lines of transportation – a step of great strategic importance that the regime could not prevent and cannot recover (even by expanding the war, qv). Clearly a strategic offensive of some weeks’ duration could not have been undertaken without reasonably secure lines of supply.

·         It’s equally true the offensive could not have been sustained without command and control resources significantly better – seemingly by an order of magnitude – than those the Libyan opposition was able to defeat Gaddafi with. Insofar as they’ve contributed to this result, the defections are striking the regime where it hurts.

·         On the flip side, the regime’s resources of heavy weapons can hardly be increasing. The opposition’s monitors would have noticed if more tanks, helicopters, fighter-bombers were being brought in. Each one lost, one-by-one, is irreplaceable. So for the same reason and to the same extent that the opposition’s supply of ordnance is improving – territorial control of entry points and routes – the regime’s situation must be deteriorating.

·         Anecdotal evidence also suggests the regime forces face morale problems. I suppose a man would fight desperately rather than face his accusers with blood on his hands. But desperation is its own morale problem.

Speaking of desperation, mistakes have been made. On still another set of general principles, they tend to weaken the position of the party that makes them.

·         Use of auxiliaries. The Hezbollah from Lebanon have a strategic interest in Syria: it’s on the line of supply from Iran. So they’re not fighting for the regime. Moreover, as soon as they conceive the line of supply to be lost, they’ll abandon the fight. This kind of conflict of interest, as Machiavelli knew, makes auxiliary troops unreliable.

·         Use of mercenaries. The Chechens have no strategic interest in Syria. If they’re fighting there, most likely, it’s only to obtain money and arms for their own struggles, which, as Machiavelli knew, is even more unreliable for the employer.

·         Expanding the war – especially one you are losing. Shelling Turkey was a bad mistake. Though their response has been measured, it has been persistent, and they determine the measure. If you wanted to shell the opposition’s supply lines, why choose one that comes through your border with a member of NATO?

·         Dispersal of forces. It remains to be seen, but my hunch is the late barrage on Homs is a diversion intended to draw troops out of Aleppo. If so, first of all, it’s an admission that the opposition troops are free to move, cannot be prevented from moving, from front to front, combat to combat. Second, an artillery barrage is one thing, armor is another. The former has destructive power, the latter has striking power. If it’s a diversion, it’s recklessly, and if it has no striking power uselessly, destructive.

It’s too bad the U.S. won’t let the Saudis and Qataris give the opposition weapons effective against aircraft. The military leaders of the opposition think this kind of thing would be decisive. Of course, a rocket that can shoot down a helicopter or fighter can, in the wrong hands, also shoot down an airliner. But that is the policy of fear; we’ve been following it too long.

What if the Free Syrian Army had taken counsel of their fears? Obviously they haven’t.

Revolutions in Review

From the Mahgrib…

…to the Persian Gulf

The revolutionary time is over and – the furor over the movie notwithstanding – things generally move at the slower pace of domestic politics. It’s becoming clear that the demonstrations were organized and carried out by counter-revolutionary elements – at least those that were not spontaneous, and only to the extent they were not. They bothered some people more than they bother me. How can a revolution expect to get rid of spontaneity? Counter-revolutionary spontaneity is just one price a revolution pays for its own spontaneity.

It’s also becoming clear that they (the counter-revolutionary elements) haven’t gained any real traction against the revolutions this way. They (the demonstrations) are dying out, aren’t they? Nothing of any importance was gained against the United States of America either. Though today the perpetrator is under arrest, I believe, because how he made the movie involved a probation violation. That’s justice!

At any rate it’s now possible to proceed with a review of what the revolutions have achieved, the reaction on the side of Salafism, etc., having proven, if persistent, comparatively weak.

One could say metaphorically that the face of the Arab world has changed. But speculative philosophy can do better. It can say that the prospects of the Arab world have changed. And so by way of summary, with an individual post projected for each of the bullets in the list:

·         Tunisia. Last I heard, they managed to write a constitution without institutionalizing the Sharia. So this is possible to be done in the absence of a secular despotism.

·         Libya. Represents, like Yemen, an instance to prove that strongmen can successfully preserve the national existence of countries that would otherwise come apart at the seams. Not that the strongman has come forth again, but that the seams are bursting. Yet in late news, the revolution has used its strength against provincial and fundamentalist militias. Even if central government cannot be restored on the same footing (but absent the strongman), there is nothing profoundly undemocratic about federalism.

·         Egypt. President Morsi behaves as though he’s already gained control of the state, in both its inward and outward aspects. Who’s to say he hasn’t? It’s far too early to say whether he will betray the revolution either for personal aggrandizement or for Islamic fundamentalism. Yet there’s been no sign whatever he’s tried. On the contrary, he has kept a politic balance. So why worry?

·         Palestine. Ever notice that the Arab Spring never seemed to touch Palestine? To me this means it was already an effective democracy. A nation in arms can still be a democratic nation.

·         Jordan. More constitution, less monarchy. The Hashemites have not tread this path at a revolutionary pace, but they’re not free to leave it either. The King really ought to provide a better example to the aristocracies and monarchies of the Arabian Peninsula.

·         Syria. Did you know that military science, like the theory of revolutions, is also a dialectical science? I could explain that in another post, but to analyze the civil war as such might be out of scope for this blog.

·         Lebanon. Like Palestine, relatively untouched by the Arab Spring, and also possessing beforehand a discernable, if tumultuous, political life. The abasement of the Assad despotism can only strengthen democracy in this country.

·         Iraq. You could ask the same question about al-Maliki that some would like to ask (prematurely) about Morsi. But the American people didn’t spend blood and treasure to set up a despot in Iraq they way they did once or twice in Vietnam.

·         Bahrain. Where agitation for democracy is still a criminal act. The successes of the Arab Spring seem to have stopped at the headwaters of the Gulf and the geographical (and political) frontier of the Arabian Peninsula.

·         Yemen. Both like and unlike Libya. The new president Hadi has restored the former authority of the government without perceptibly making a revolution in the state. Reforms only, but reforms that seem to enjoy a measure of popular support. Meanwhile, Al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula has been reduced to making war on Moslems.

The decision lies with Egypt and Iraq, the one wealthy in population, the other in oil. (Both of which, by the way, have verbally aligned themselves against the current regime in Syria.) If these centers of gravity are shifted permanently to democracy, the rest are that much more likely to continue in that path or to follow. If that happens in this generation, what will happen in the next? and where?

…Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.

It’s not Left Adventurism…

…but it’s not right opportunism either. The revolution in Egypt is passing into the hand s of an individual who, it may be hoped, occasionally asks himself, “What would Lenin do?”

Though the circumstances differ greatly, Morsi’s task of getting rid of the “interim” government does not differ in principle from Lenin’s task of getting rid of the Kerensky government.

The longer the secular liberal parties sit on their hands, the smaller their influence on the result. Morsi is steering the middle course as well as any revolutionary who ever had a chance to gain control of the state. It’s time for them to get on board.