The Arab Spring

I somehow doubt Syria is part of that plan.

Oh it is. Syria doesnt produce much oil itself, but it has a lot of influence with other nations that do, mostly by threatening them. Syria is essentially an Iranian client state, and Iran and China are pretty close.

In other news, there is a new Syrian rebel group.

Syrian opposition is showing little to no signs of reaching any kind of unity, and without that, they'll never get Western support. Russia and China wouldn't even need to posture about this the way they do.

Yeah no one outside of the Arabian Peninsula is going to back the rebels until they are organised into one group. However as is my way, I'm going to optimistically point out that the opposition being formed into multiple groups should improve grassroots operations, as the leadership of each group will be more in touch with the people on the ground than a single ‘top’ leadership would be.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-18348201

Unconfirmed reports of another massacre. What the hell, is Assad trying to get the international community on his ass?

Wisdom and avoiding overconfidence are virtues that brutal dictators usually lack.

I'm unsure as to if Assad is directly authorising these massacres. Now while he is most certainly responsible for them, via it being his military, I am starting to doubt if he is giving direct authorisation. So far Assad has been playing it reasonably smart, this entire situation is making me wonder if there is some army commander out in Hama, with an axe to grind. Assad seems smart enough to know that the "It wasn't me" defence isn't going to work fever, he either needs to keep things quite enough for Russia to cover his back (meaning few large scale massacres) or go full throat and try and wipe out any possible revolutionaries, before an intervention can be throw together. Massacring woman and children doesn’t help him with either goal. All it does is distance the Russians, (and my extension the Chinese) without giving him the military advantage of eliminating possible rebel soldiers (adult or younger adult males).

In the end, Assad has been reasonably practical until now, either he's finally lost it (entirely possible) or someone who doesn’t understand the geopolitical situation has decided to deviate from the official plan.

edited 6th Jun '12 6:46:04 PM by Silasw

Syria is full of sectarian and ethnic tensions. It's entirely possible things spiraled out of Assad's control...in which case he is an utter idiot or unbelievably arrogant, as he should know better - he only fucking RAN the country for a decade plus. "I'm not ordering strikes on them! I just armed and organized the vengeance-crazed militias that are!"

It's hard to tell why but he probably gave the military a lot of leeway which they took as meaning to crush the rebellion at any cost.

Looks like Russia convinced China to stay with them probably with a gas price concession. Really they don't need to veto military intervention, NATO doesn't have the manpower.

They don't for a full scale intervention. However anything in or over Syria would likely involve Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Throw then in, Turkey, the fact that NATO probably has munitions set aside for a Syria centric conflict (that was a problem that occurred over Libya, NATO started to run low on munitions that weren’t set aside for some other conflict) along with the fact that a Syria intervention would have the advantage of local air bases (Turkey and Cyprus) and it might be possible to pull something of, on a small scale.

edited 6th Jun '12 6:46:54 PM by Silasw

Well Turkey is a good ally but Saudi Arabia and Bahrain are other countries killing protestors, just at a lower scale.

Sorry that was stupid of me. When I said Bahrain I meant Qatar, (I’ve corrected it now) though your point about killing protesters does still stand.

Oh okay, well that's just a typo then.

For me, I'm just unsure what NATO should do about Syria. The problem is that it is difficult to step in without a player ready to take the helm after the current regime is taken out. At the same time, I'm concerned that if we step into the situation incorrectly we could make the situation worse no matter our intentions (and I don't want a proliferation of weapons in the region to further complicate issues).

But, as we stand back and do nothing, neighbouring countries are being struck with outbreaks of violence. Lebanon is already suffering a miniature version of what is going on in Syria as political forces clash against one another. I mean, I think even Iran, while supportive of Syria, is basically thinking "not worth it to put boots on the ground for this".

A no-fly zone is not likely to help the rebels yet, they need more success on the ground first to make things happen. We most certainly won't be sending in the marines, and the US is not in a political position to do so (and I don't want the US to have to shoulder that alone, otherwise it's just going to be a gigantic charlie fox... not because I think the US can't do it but because if you don't have an international community in there, things tend to get out of hand).

Even if China switches to abstain, as per their policy as of five years ago, and Russia feels its no longer worth it to veto condemnations, what then? Sanctions don't make a difference with a country we don't trade with in the first place. The Arab League isn't going to deploy peacekeepers. Can we really pour peacekeepers into the country anyway? I'm torn as to what we can do realistically and practically and succeed.

Well if nothing else we could impose an arms embargo. Hell, we might even get the Russians to abide by it.

Assuming they can get the Russians to abide by that, what would it do exactly?

Oh, for Christ's sake. Well, if nothing else, this pretty much seals the deal that Assad's army did it...

Hopefully it would even the playing field a bit and allow the rebels to consolidate their power. The only issue comes from the fact that any arms embargo would have to be applied to both sides.

Was there ever any doubt?

Please, everyone knows the slaughters are perpetrated by drugged Al-Qaeda's tibetan monks trained by MOSSAD agents in Monaco's huge air force secret bases while receiving massive financial support from Magestic 12, the Illuminati and the Cuban Association of lawnmower workers, Light Yagami's and S.H.I.E.L.D.'s influence being obvious, thus justifying the Russian and Chinese positions. Try to follow the news a little bit before posting here!

edited 7th Jun '12 9:40:02 AM by RufusShinra

The BBC are reporting that the UN Monitors were actually shot at, following on from that Al Jazeera article. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-18352281

And that isn't the "oh shit it's on now" moment because...?

It's been on for a while. Hopefully shooting at the UN will be considered crossing a line, but when massacres of 100 people at a time are a weekly thing, a certain amount of desensitisation sadly sets in.

x4Makes sense to me.

edited 8th Jun '12 2:48:29 PM by tricksterson

I just want to hear China and Russia declare in unison at the UN that shooting at UN inspectors isn't a good enough reason to suspect that something serious is going on. I want them to say that UN inspectors or delegations getting shot at isn't a good reason to start planning an intervention.

Sadly one shooting incident isn't going to be enough, why? Because, Assad is going to play the "It wasn't me it was those nasty terrorists" card for as long as he can. Until there is strong proof that it was the regime that shot at the monitors, Russia and China will claim that it was the rebels.

If the US really wanted Assad out, we could do it without using an invasion. We would just have the CIA set up a shadow militia, and use that as cover for special ops teams, backed by air strikes. That's how we "invaded" Afghanistan. The fact that we aren't doing it means we don't feel it's worth it.

Meanwhile, this appears to be a super-interesting book comparing Egypt and Syria.

"Rather than explain the transition, this book compares how the structure of executive power allows for an authoritarian regime to change its ruling coalition (or not). Thus, it explains why Egypt could rapidly begin a transition while Syria could not. In the case of Egypt, this meant a long-time dictator and the neoliberal team could be removed and replaced by SCAF while “the state” remained in tact. Contrastingly, no such coalitional alterations could be made in Syria and is why its state was drawn into a long conflict with society as a consequence of the challenges posed by popular mobilization. The book does this by comparing institution building during the 1970s as well as examines elite and non-elite politics during the last decade in Egypt and Syria."