(*Political parties or individuals who support the FSA could serve as cabinet ministers as opposed to actual FSA officers).
A Syrian government of national unity would have to continue the fight against ISIS and other Jihadist groups. However, with the FSA and Kurdish forces eventually and carefully integrated into the Baath regime’s army a new more formidable armed forces would be created which could defeat ISIS. The combined support of Russia, the United States, republican Iran and the Gulf States (including Saudi Arabia) in the form of providing non-combat military aid and air support to Syria with a new Syrian armed forces would ensure an eventual or even a relatively quick victory over ISIS.
With ISIS defeated in Syria, military success on the part of the Iraqi armed forces (with continuing international air support ) would ensue without the commitment of foreign troops to Iraq. Consequently political and military resolution to the apparently intractable mess in Syria and Iraq is dependent upon the appointment of a new Syrian prime minister.
Whether President Bashar al-Assad appoints a national unity government will ultimately depend on Russia and republican Iran. These two powers should realize that the military situation on the ground is such that the Baathist Syrian regime is incapable of prevailing over ISIS unless Russian and republican Iran commits ground troops to Syria. It would however be ill-advisable for either power to commit ground troops to Syria.
Should Russia commit ground troops to Syria then that nation will become tied down in another Afghanistan, the domestic ramifications of which might well eventually bring down the Putin regime. With regard to Republican Iran, that nation could face an outright war with Saudi Arabia and allied gulf monarchies if Tehran sends troops to fight in either Syria or Iraq. Such a military coalition might but at an initial disadvantage against republican Iran but the tables will turn if *Egypt under President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi commits troops to such an alliance. Furthermore, due to Pakistan’s close relations with Saudi Arabia, Pakistani troops might be sent to assist in the military struggle against republican Iran.
(*President Sisi will hopefully, in addition to the current air support, despatch troops to Libya for a limited period of time to help the Tobruk based government of Prime Minister Abdullah al –Thani to establish order throughout that nation. Cairo cannot afford to have Libya used as a Jihadist base to eventually destabilize Egypt).
The Crucial Importance of International Nuclear Verification
The other plausible scenario in which the aforementioned predominately Sunni nations may go to war against republican Iran is if that nation cheats on its international agreement not to build nuclear weapons. Alternatively, a nation such as Saudi Arabia can expeditiously acquire nuclear weapons due to its close relations with Pakistan which probably has such weapons.
Overall the situation in the Gulf region is potentially Balkanite but with the scope for nuclear weapons to eventually be used. Consequently it is imperative that the Obama administration ensure that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) carries out prompt and effective verification procedures to monitor that republican Iran is complying with the international agreement which was signed earlier this year in Lausanne.
The success or failure of the Obama administration in foreign policy will ultimately be determined on whether there are effective compliance procedures in place regarding the Iran nuclear deal. Ensuring that republican Iran complies with the nuclear deal will remove the spectre of war in the Gulf or a nuclear arms race developing in that region. Consequently, it is imperative that currently dangerous situations in the Middle East, such as Syria, be converted into examples of international co-operation between potential rival powers.
Russia and republican Iran can apply their influence to ensure that President Bashar al-Assad appoints a new prime minister to head a government of national unity. If Moscow and Tehran are shrewd they should involve Washington and Riyadh in the selection of a new prime minister (with executive authority which supplants the power of President Bashar al-Assad) as part of the formulation of a new government of national unity.
Creating An Hospitable Climate in the Middle East for the Russian Bear
Russian influence in the Middle East can be maintained and even expanded on a long term basis by Moscow aligning its interests with those of the Christian communities of that region. Syria’s Christian community, as well as those of the Alawite and Shiite communities, will undoubtedly give their voting allegiance in a post-Assad Syria to the Baath Party (or a neo-Baathist equivalent). A future legal stipulation that future Syrian governments must have a two-thirds parliamentary majority, would ensure Russia via its alliance with the Syrian Baath Party will consequently be able to maintain its influence in Syria.
Due to a Moscow alliance with Syria’s Christian community, Russia would be able to also establish close links with Lebanon’s powerful Maronite community. Currently Lebanon’s Christians are hostile to Moscow due to the Assad regime’s alliance with Tehran.
There is also scope for the Putin administration to establish links to Palestinian Christians who live in Israel proper and in the Palestinian territories. Moscow as a champion of Palestinian Christian concerns (particularly in Jerusalem) could eventually fulfil the role of an honest broker between Israel and the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority.
The Putin administration could also eventually politically support Iraq’s Chaldean Catholic community which have yet to regain a sense of political direction and influence since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. Although the Obama administration’s relations with Moscow are currently frosty, Washington may accept that its overall interests in Iraq are served by allowing Moscow to exercise influence in that nation via that nation’s Christian communities, if that contributes to the defeat of ISIS.
The major gain that Moscow could make in the Middle East would be to support Egypt’s Coptic community who approximately constitute 10% of the Arab world’s most populous nation. Parliamentary elections are due to be held in Egypt this year (2015) and hopefully that nation’s Coptic Christian community will support a specific party (which also represents secular inclined Muslims) so that their interests can be effectively politically represented. Such a party could receive Russian aid with the discreet blessing of the Sisi administration.
Indeed, the Sisi administration will hopefully give a free hand to Egypt’s secular orientated parties to win this year’s parliamentary elections in lieu of forming a regime based governmental party. Such a development would provide President Sisi with the latitude to enter into an alliance with the substantial proportion of the population which is hostile to the Muslim Brotherhood. This would provide the Egyptian government with a sufficient support base to prevent an Algerian type descent into a vicious quasi-civil war.
A Moscow backed party which predominately (but not exclusively) represents the interests of Egypt’s Coptic community would undoubtedly be aligned to the ruling Free Officers’ Union due to a profound fear of the Muslim Brotherhood.
There are also positive domestic political dividends for the Putin administration to support the Middle East’s Christian communities. Currently, the Russian federal government can be politically and ideologically categorized as semi-authoritarian bureaucratic government with a nationalist orientation. If the Putin administration wants to establish a deeper and more expansive political domestic base then it can even more closely align with the Russian Orthodox Church. Consequently the Putin administration establishing political links with the Christian communities of the Middle East would serve not only Moscow’s foreign policy interests but also its domestic considerations.
Alternately, but still improbably, Russian support for the Assad regime may secure victory for that tyranny. The Syrian Baathist regime simply lacks the manpower to reconquer the approximately 80% of territory that anti-regime forces hold. Consequently it is exceptionally stupid and short-sighted for Russia to bomb the positions of the FSA because this stifles the potential for these moderate freedom fighters to eventually align with the Baathist regime’s forces under the direction of a Syrian government of national unity to defeat ISIS.
The Russian bombing of FSA forces will also foster anti-Moscow sentiment among the western powers so that sanctions against the Putin regime will be maintained or possibly even tightened. The current domestic economic situation for Russia is already precarious as reflected by the Putin regime’s failure to raise sufficient capital by selling domestic bonds. Furthermore, Russia is already economically vulnerable as reflected by its allowing substantial Chinese foreign investment in Siberia in the form of establishing factories and renting prime farmland.
The major long term problem concerning Chinese investment in Siberia is that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is not a democracy balanced by a social market economy. Instead the PRC is a socialist command market economy in which the state by directing resources, artificially engineers high levels of employment. However achieving relatively high economic and employment growth rates is dependent upon Beijing being able to gain control of massive amounts of resources in both domestic and international contexts. Because it is not foreseeable in the short to medium term that the PRC will transition into a multi-party electoral democracy with labour rights and a social market economy (similar to Germany’s), there is a plausible long term scenario that the PRC will eventually conquer and settle in substantial parts of Siberia.
Russia can avoid the long term scenario of a war of conquest by the PRC by at least having a working type of relationship with the United States, the European Union (EU) and rich oil producing Gulf states, such as *Saudi Arabia. Indeed, the Saudis can provide Moscow with needed petro-dollars should the Putin administration fulfil a positive role by helping to engineer political balance in Damascus by helping form an FSA supported government of national unity under a very politically skilled new prime minister.
(*The Putin administration should realize that its attempts to cultivate cordial relations with the Sisi regime in Egypt are doomed to failure unless Russia conciliates with Saudi Arabia).
Alas, Moscow’s current actions of bombing FSA positions in Syria is creating the scope for nuclear proliferation and a broader war in the Middle East between nation states in which Russia in the long term will become too internally and externally weakened to maintain its national security interests. Should Tehran become emboldened by short term Russian military action in Syria to cheat on its international agreement so as to develop nuclear weapons, a broader conflict between Sunni states led by Saudi Arabia (which would be supported by Pakistan) will ensue which could eventually take the form of outright nuclear war in the Middle East.
President Putin as an intelligent man will hopefully utilize President Obama’s multilateral approach to foreign affairs to achieve a win-win outcomes, instead of a win-lose scenario in Moscow’s favour which will finally result in a lose-lose result for the world. Should Moscow negatively exploit President Obama’s good will then the US president may become a President Jimmy Carter who paves the way for an anti-Moscow President Ronald Reagan to re-emerge in a renewed and hostile bi-polar world.
The current American Republican Party crop of presidential candidates could lead a future anti-Moscow and anti-Tehran administration. Furthermore, on the Democratic Party side, it should be pointed out that Hillary Clinton can become an intractable foe if she perceives that either the United States’ interests are being threatened or if a smaller nation is being bullied by a major power. Overall, it is best that creative *win-win outcomes are engineered in the Middle East between major powers so that a bi-polar world is not again re-created.
(*The concept of win-win outcomes was formulated by the American political scientist Mary Parker Follet (1868 to 1933). She envisaged the win-win approach as one where two potentially adversarial parties intelligently convert a difficult conflict situation into an outcome where mutually beneficial creative solutions are arrived at which actually improve the overall situation).
The Syrian Civil War paradoxically offers the opportunity for the major world powers to arrive at win-win outcomes because Syrians (despite inter-communal diversity) are generally very intelligent people due to their being at the cross-roads of the Middle East. It is therefore not beyond the wit of Moscow to utilize its leverage with the Assad regime derived from committing of air power and military advisors to secure the appointment of a prime minister who can assemble a government of national unity which enjoys the confidence of powers such as the United States and Saudi Arabia.
Why A Cambodian Outcome Must Be Avoided in Syria
Crucial to the success of such a government will be the appointment of a Defence Minister or possibly two joint Defence Ministers (respectively representing the Baath Party and the FSA) to engineer the formation a new Syrian army to effectively fight ISIS. Care however would have to be taken to ensure that a Cambodian scenario is not repeated. Under the 1991 Paris Accords, components of the anti-communist Khmer People’s National Liberation Front (KPNLAF) and the monarchist Arm’ee National Sihanoukiste (ANS) were merged into the armed forces of the Hun Sen regime.
Democratic United Nations (UN) supervised elections were held in Cambodia in May 1993 which was decisively won by the monarchist FUNCINPEC party. However, the dictator Hun Sen coerced his way into subsequently being named as ‘co-prime minister’ with the FUNCINPEC leader, Prince Norodom Ranariddh. During the 1993 to 1997 period, Hun Sen was clearly the more powerful of the two ‘co-prime ministers’ and this power was confirmed when in 1997 he used his military muscle to force Prince Norodom Ranariddh from office.
The moral of the Cambodian debacle is that greater care needs to be taken when merging former combatant forces into a new armed forces to ensure that one of the previous components does not subsequently predominate. The crucial mistake which was made in the 1990s Cambodian peace process was for the UN to allow the Hun Sen regime to remain in place and consequently ensure that its interests prevailed when forming a new Cambodian army.
A Cambodian debacle can be avoided in the Syrian context by ensuring that President Bashar al-Assad is compelled by international pressure (particularly from Russia and republican Iran) to appoint a leader with outstanding conciliatory abilities as prime minister to head a government of national unity. One of the major challenges which will confront this government will be to form a politically balanced armed forces capable of defeating ISIS and other Jihadist forces. This national unity government will also have to confront the challenge of administering fair and free elections to a constituent assembly to draw up a new constitution for Syria.
Avoiding A ‘Lose-Lose’ Scenario Potentially Involving Nuclear Weapons
Because there should be a stipulation that a new constitution would have to be promulgated by a two-thirds majority the minority communities, which will undoubtedly support the Baath Party, can ensure that a parliamentary form of regime is adopted with the requirement that a government have a two-thirds parliamentary majority to be formed.
The current deplorable situation in Syria is complex but it is not beyond redemption if the diverse foreign power stakeholders work together to reach a political solution. Failure to do so, will inevitably lead to a ‘lose-lose’ scenario with potentially grave international ramifications because the Middle East is currently on its way to being a Balkans type of trouble spot with nuclear weapons !