So, we have extended our military contribution to the fight
against the Islamic State (IS) to include air strikes against targets in Syria.
Many think that this is a violation of International Law and equivalent to a
declaration of war against that country.
They probably have a good case.
“But”, say the apologists, “the U.S. and other countries are doing it.” To which I say, “So what? Don’t you remember as a parent telling your
children that just because other kids were doing something didn’t mean that
they had to do it too?”
But the Middle East and this war is much more serious than
all that. One of the most disturbing
things I have heard recently was the statement by our esteemed Defence
Minister, Jason Kenney, acknowledging that he did not know what the outcome
would be or what would constitute victory or at least closure of the
mission. The most important things you
need to determine before going to war, and our Defence Minister doesn’t know
the answers. That is scary.
I would suggest that the west has never really understood
the Middle East. It mostly ignored it
for many centuries after the Crusades where it represented a different religion
and culture. It was considered exotic
but not very important. Meanwhile the
west went through many years of internal warfare and western expansion into the
Americas. The Middle East was finally
“rediscovered” after the fall of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the First
World War. Suddenly there was a need to
map out “spheres of influence” in the region, with France and Great Britain
vying for spheres and buffers depending upon their strategic and economic
interests. Whereas in Europe, with the defeat
of Germany and the breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the people were able
to determine to some extent, their own fate thanks to the Wilsonian idea of
self-determination, in the Middle East, the people were given no such
option. So you ended up with borders
that took no account of ethnic or religious difference. Thus you have countries like Iraq with
Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish peoples and too frequently leaders who came from one
of the minority groups. All the while,
the western countries tried to influence the political shape of each
country. If you didn’t like the current
king/president/prime minister, just arrange a coup to get the one you
want. The U.S. joined this game after
the Second World War when the area’s oil became so attractive. But as long as there were strong men in power
and the west kept a lid on things, tensions in each country could be kept in
check.
Even the First Gulf War didn’t disturb the status quo very
much, largely because the west had a specific goal, namely get Iraq out of
Kuwait, and they stuck to it. For that we have to thank President George H.W.
Bush for not being goaded into something more wide-spread. But then came the Iraq War, the brainchild of
Bush the younger (but certainly not the wiser).
The U.S. and its allies thought that this was just going to be a nice
surgical little war to oust Sadam Hussein and instantly make the country a
democracy. Thus there was no specific
war planning or, more importantly, peace planning. The US forces started making mistakes right
off the bat. For the first year, the
military and civilian authorities hardly spoke to each other. Each side had a different approach to the
problem. After the first couple of
months the land battle had supposedly ended. President Bush the younger told us
that under a “Mission Accomplished” banner while aboard an aircraft carrier
sailing off San Diego on May 1, 2003. Then the real war, the insurgency, got
started. The coalition forces, except
for a few insightful people, did not recognize this. They still thought of themselves as
liberators and just occupying the country until a peaceful turnover could take
place. Plans were well under way before the end of 2003 for a major drawdown of
forces. It didn’t work. The insurgency got worse and worse and the
allied forces didn’t know how to deal with it.
Some allies fell by the wayside recognizing that this was not what they
had signed up for. So the U.S. had to
send more and more troops, both to replace allied forces but also to deal with
the growing insurgency. As we now know,
the last U.S. combat forces left Iraq less than two years ago and now they are
back.
One of the problems that arose during the Iraq War was the
question of what kind of war it was: a
conventional war; a civil war; or an insurgency. You may ask what the difference is; a war is
a war. But the kind of war it is really
guides how you deal with it. In a
conventional war you are trying to take territory and defeat an opposing
army. Western armies are good at that,
and train and equip themselves accordingly.
That was what Iraq was supposed to be.
If it is a civil war, as an outsider, you probably don’t want to be
there in the first place. Civil wars
tend to be bloody and cruel affairs, and any outside interference is going to
be deeply resented by one or both sides.
Even a civilized nation like the United States took fifteen or more
years to recover from its Civil War. In
a counter insurgency, however, you are not trying to gain land or defeat
armies; you are trying to win people. It
calls for a very different approach by civilian and military leaders. It must ensure security for the people you
are trying to win over, not solely you own forces. It involves infrastructure and making the
people’s lives better. And it must be
done with the whole-hearted support of the leaders of the community you are
trying to win over.
Going back to Minister Kenny’s admission that the government
does not know the strategy or end game of the current war against the IS, I
think you can see the problem. We don’t
know what kind of war we are expected to fight there. They say it is to cripple the IS, but how do
you do that? Just bombing and killing IS
fighters is likely to get you more fighters, and if IS goes, there will be
another group to follow.
In his excellent book about the first three years of the
Iraq War, “Fiasco” (The Penguin Press, 2006) Thomas E. Ricks postulates four
scenarios about where that war could go after 2006. In the best case scenario, the author cites
the example of the Philippines where the insurgency following the Spanish American
war was successfully put down after three years, but it then required the
presence of US troops until after the Second World War, a period of 47
years. The middling scenario uses the
example of France in Algeria and Israel in Lebanon, both of which ended in success
for the insurgents but unsatisfactorily for the occupying country. In his worse scenario, the author (remember
this was written in 2006) postulates civil war, partition and even regional war
in and around Iraq. What we are seeing
now is the “worse” scenario with what amounts to a civil war encompassing two
countries in the region, Iraq and Syria.
Oh, by the way, the fourth scenario was called the nightmare scenario
and involved nuclear, biological and chemical warfare.
The idea that the west can somehow impose western style
liberal democracy on the Middle East must be considered the height or
arrogance. Recent history must show even
the most optimistic that that region is just not ready for it. It took Western Europe hundreds of years to
come to grips with its linguistic, ethnic and religious difference, and to then
learn how to manage it all through democracies.
The US seems to think it is easy because it was handed democracy on a
silver platter by the writings and examples of the British. According to them, everyone should just be
able to write a constitution at a convention and jump right into a functioning
democracy. It is hard to overcome the
hundreds of years of autocratic governments and colonial powers that have ruled
the Middle Eastern countries throughout their histories. It will take time and will, but it must be
instigated and embraced by the people themselves, not be outside powers. That is the tragedy of the Middle East. It is a region looking desperately for its
own path, and all the while it is being attacked, invaded and interfered with
by outsiders who just do not understand the area and its history.
I don’t know what the final answer to the Middle East’s
problems is, but I’m almost positive it does not involve the “conventional” war
approach that the west, including Canada, has embarked upon.
