Creating Civil Wars is Russian Foreign Policy

Featured in Stars and Stripes on March 24, 2016. To access the original article, click here.

Russia is increasing its presence in Syria, while its efforts to find a diplomatic solution to the impasse grind to a halt. T-90 main battle tanks with explosive armor, only previously deployed in Chechnya and Ukraine, have been spotted outside of Aleppo. Reuters reports seven T-90s are at the Russian airfield in Latakia. Russia took over the main international airport in Damascus last year, and began airlifting tons of supplies, soldiers and armaments into the country, according to Business Insider. President Vladimir Putin confirmed in December that Russia is providing support to the Free Syrian Army.

“We support it from the air, as well as the Syrian army, we assist them with weapons, ammunition and provide material support,” he said.

This is part of a long pattern of Russian expansion of its military reach since the fall of the Soviet Union.

In March 1992, elements of the Russian 14th Army sided with separatists to oppose the central government of Moldova’s efforts to exert sovereignty on the ethnically Russian enclave of Transnistria. Russian officers trained the Transnistrian defense forces, and transferred weaponry to them. The separatist regime engaged in ethnic cleansing, leading to 25,000 Moldovans becoming internally displaced persons (IDPs). Russia then engineered a cease-fire patrolled by predominantly Russian peacekeepers, and the 14th Army remains on Transnistrian soil.

From 1991 to 1993, when Azerbaijan faced a war of occupation by neighboring Armenia, Russia put its entire weight behind pro-Russian Armenia against pro-Western Azerbaijan. This support allowed Armenia to occupy the Nagorno-Karabakh region as well as seven surrounding regions of Azerbaijan. During the war, in February 1992, Russia’s 366th Motorized Rifle Regiment surrounded the Azerbaijani town of Khojaly, while Armenians massacred the residents. Moscow said the Russians who had been involved in this action were “volunteers.”

By 1993, the Russian 7th Army was already protecting Armenia’s borders. Russia then arranged to be a co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group, which has mediated Armenian-Azerbaijani peace talks for decades without any results. Azerbaijan houses approximately 600,000-1,000,000 IDPs expelled from its occupied regions. For Russia, however, the continuing unrest provides an excuse for maintaining 3,000 troops at the 102nd Military Base, north of Yerevan, Armenia.

Russian forces supported Abkhazian separatists in their fight with the Georgian government in 1992. Human Rights Watch reported, “The conflict in Abkhazia was heightened by the involvement of Russia, mostly on the Abkhaz side, especially during the war’s initial stages. … Russian arms found their way into Abkhaz hands, Russian planes bombed civilian targets in Georgian-controlled territory, Russian military vessels, manned by supporters of the Abkhaz side, were made available to shell Georgian-held Sukhumi, and at least a handful of Russian-trained and Russian-paid fighters defended Abkhaz territory in Tkvarcheli.”

Human Rights Watch later interviewed a group of six armed Russians in Abkhazia who admitted they had been brought to the conflict area on Russian helicopters, were all former KGB and Spetznaz forces, had been fighting Georgian troops, had previously been fighting in Transnistria, and had begun in Moscow as a group of 30 “experienced, disciplined, Russian professionals.” They then denied being members of Russian government forces, but said they were “independent, patriotic forces.” (It was one of the earliest examples of the “little green men” made famous in the 2014 Russian seizure of Crimea.) The result: a cease-fire patrolled by Russian peacekeepers.

This led to devastating results in 2008, when the Russian army intervened in Abkhazia and Ossetia to “restore the peace.” Georgia cares for approximately 300,000 IDPs. Russia is one of three parties involved in the Geneva peace talks. Today, Russian troops remain in these separatist areas, on soil recognized by the international community as Georgian, without the permission of the Georgian government. Russia also recognizes these areas as independent states.

In 2014, Russian forces stationed at the Russian naval station in Crimea surged out of their base in uniforms without insignia, to forcibly evict Ukrainian forces from their own territory. Russian “volunteers” have fought on the side of separatists in eastern Ukraine, and these separatists are armed with Russian tanks, anti-aircraft missiles and personnel carriers. Crater analysis shows that mortar rounds and missiles fired in support of the separatists have their origins inside Russia itself.

Russia has now annexed Crimea, and called for diplomacy to solve the crisis it created in eastern Ukraine. It is a cosponsor of the Minsk talks. Today, Russian troops are stationed in Crimea, and Putin has threatened to introduce Russian troops overtly into eastern Ukraine to “protect” the citizenry.

The pattern is clear: Russian military support for a side in a civil war contributes to unrest, and then Russian diplomatic efforts keep the conflict simmering. The continuing problems justify maintaining a Russian troop presence.

In all these instances, Russian military interventions and/or peace efforts have led to a continued expansion of Russian power and influence. America and its allies in Syria need to learn from history, and not just repeat it.

James J. Coyle, director of Chapman University’s Center for Global Education, is former director of Middle East studies at the U.S. Army War College.

Russia Looking for an Exit?

Published by the Atlantic Council on September 24, 2015. To access the original article, click here.

As Russia increases its support for beleaguered Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, rebels in eastern Ukraine have observed a ceasefire since September 1. The second Minsk ceasefire agreement, signed in February, had been repeatedly violated. But things have changed. Some separatist leaders have left the area, returning to posh jobs in Moscow. Former Donetsk Prime Minister Alexander Borodai has resumed his consulting career in the Russian capital, and former Luhansk Prime Minister Marat Bashirov chairs the government relations committee at the Russian Managers Association.

Russian reporting on Ukraine has also decreased. Two of its star war reporters have been sent to Syria. On September 6, Dmitry Kiselyov's two-and-half hour program—Rossiya 1's flagship weekly news program—was different: known for his fiery rhetoric against the government in Kyiv, the host "was uncharacteristically cursory" in his comments about Ukraine, the BBC observed. Kiselyov didn't discuss Ukraine until more than half way through his show, and this was in a week with deadly clashes outside Ukraine's parliament. Another Russian journalist observed, "Kiselyov knows something about a change in the rules of the game...The rest of us will find out a little later." RT reported that an impetus for better relations is coming from the West.

Talking heads began to speculate that Russian President Vladimir Putin may be looking to ease the Ukraine crisis and restore relations with the West. Carnegie Endowment's Dmitri Trenin writes, "Moscow certainly hopes that cooperation with the United States and the West on Syria would blunt their confrontation over Ukraine." He goes on to say that it's "probably not a mere coincidence" that hostilities in the Donbas have died down when they did. Another possible reason for the timing is Putin's upcoming speech at the United Nations General Assembly on September 28. Reduced hostilities in Ukraine could lead to a blunting of the criticism he can expect from the world community. The strategy is paying off: President Obama has agreed to meet with Putin during his visit.

There are a number of factors for Russia's changing strategy in Ukraine. Despite Putin's bluster about restoring Russian greatness, it is in considerable economic difficulty. The state budget is highly dependent on the sale of oil and gas. Andrey Movchan reports that 60 percent of consolidated budget revenues come from taxes either directly or indirectly related to the oil and gas sector. The Russian government needs oil at $100 a barrel to balance its budget; with oil selling between $40 and $50 per barrel, it is running deep deficits. The Russian economy is projected to decline by three percent in 2015.

The future doesn't look any brighter for Russia's energy sector either. While Rosneft planned to double its oil shipments to China, and Gazprom announced a doubling of the Nord Stream natural gas pipeline, the reality is quite different. Oil shipments to China have fallen below contracted levels (1.48 mt increase for 2015 instead of the contracted 5 million mt increase). Sanctions are preventing western participation in the Sakhalin II project. China is not providing the $25 billion financing to build the Power of Siberia pipeline and has refused to sign a decade-long anticipated contract for the Altai pipeline. In the West, the much ballyhooed Turkish Stream is also being held in abeyance. The Russian mega-energy deals of the last decade appear to be more propaganda than reality.

Economics is not the Russian President's only concern: the Russian people do not support deeper involvement in Ukraine. According to the Levada Center, 70 percent of Russians supported the takeover of Crimea as "Russian" land, and 80 percent say that retaking Crimea proves Russia's great power status. But when it comes to eastern Ukraine, the results are different. As of March 2015, 57 percent of Russians said the country should stay within its present borders, 64 percent said Russia should not try to keep former Soviet republics under control, and 55 percent said the country should focus on domestic issues. As the Russian economy continues to worsen, it's likely these isolationist sentiments will only increase.

Russia's continuing involvement in Ukraine is turning counterproductive for the Kremlin. Before 2014, Ukraine was leaning toward a more Western identity but nothing was solidified. That identity is no longer ambiguous, thanks to the Kremlin's overreach. Now there are US special forces on Ukrainian soil, training Ukrainian troops. The commander of US Army-Europe Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges said that those numbers may be expanded. In 2014, Ukraine signed an Association Agreement with the European Union, eliminating the possibility of it joining the Kremlin-led Eurasia Economic Union. Long divided NATO allies remain united over Russian sanctions, and for the first time in its post-Soviet history, a majority of Ukrainians want their country to join NATO.

Last week US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter spoke with his Russian counterpart on ways deconflict Syria, but any cooperation between the two countries should not soften our Ukraine policy. The West may have only marginal influence on the worldwide energy market, but increasing pressure on pipeline routes, Russian public opinion, and negative geopolitical developments are taking their toll on the Kremlin's resolve.

James J. Coyle is a Research Fellow at the Atlantic Council and the Director of Global Education at Chapman University in Orange, CA.

James J. Coyle We still don't have a strategy

Published in the Orange County Register on September 12, 2014. To access the original article, click here.

In his Wednesday speech on the Islamic State, President Barack Obama explained to the American people why we should be engaged against the group, also known as ISIS.

Leaders have threatened America and its allies and some Americans are getting combat experience with ISIS that they could use against the U.S. when they return home, the president explained. Unfortunately, he did not deliver on the grand strategy he promised to “degrade and ultimately destroy” this threat.

He said he is launching a counterterrorist strategy. Yet, despite the president naming ISIS as a terrorist group, it is actually an insurgency rather than a terrorist group. ISIS does not engage solely in terrorist attacks to influence another party. Rather, it controls territory within two nation states and is running cities it has captured. For U.S. efforts to succeed, a counterinsurgency strategy is needed, not a counterterrorist one.

He is limiting American military involvement to air operations and the training of indigenous forces. Air operations alone cannot defeat a dedicated enemy, least of all one that uses unconventional warfare tactics.

In 1999, President Bill Clinton tried the same strategy in the Balkans. The Serbs only capitulated, however, after a hundred days when the president upped the ante and announced he might introduce ground forces after all.

Obama’s examples of American success in using air power to stop terrorism are Yemen and Somalia. He could not have picked worse examples. Both states lack a real central government, both suffer major internal insurgencies, both are considered failed states.

Neither the United States nor its allies can afford failed states in the heart of the Middle East.

In Iraq, the U.S. military team currently in Baghdad estimates that 30 to 50 percent of the Iraqi armed forces are unable to fight, or have ceased to exist.

The Iraqi military’s refusal to defend Mosul against the Islamic State speaks for itself.

In Syria, the president plans to rely on the Syrian opposition to defeat ISIS. The group is the only serious military force opposing the government of Bashar al-Assad, and the U.S. government is committed to the defeat of that regime. The president is silent on the contradictory nature of the policy he has outlined. There is also a question as to the effectiveness of the non-ISIS opposition.

The U.S. has a checkered history of building indigenous forces.

In the 1950s and 1960s at the School of the Americas, the U.S. Army trained its Latin counterparts in security operations.

The result was the overthrow of a number of democracies throughout South America by the American-trained officers.

In the 1980s the U.S. trained fighters to defeat Soviet forces in Afghanistan. The result was the creation of groups throughout Afghanistan and Pakistan who are aligned with the Taliban and al-Qaida. The U.S. has spent millions over the past decade training the Iraqi military – a military that cannot or will not fight ISIS.

The president makes much over his efforts to build a coalition, which will include Arab partners. He makes no mention of the largest regional power: non-Arab Iran.

As the U.S. learned in its Iraq war, the Persians have the ability to make or break governments and insurgencies in the area. Why is there no place at the table, then, for this regional heavy weight. As for the coalition he is building, what do they plan to do?

Insurgencies have been won and lost around the world. The deciding factor in who wins the military struggle is ultimately who wins the support of the inhabitants. This requires more than dropping bombs from the sky – it requires engaging in the creation of civil societies that can meet the needs of the people.

Half measures designed to be all things to all people are not a strategy for success, but for long-term failure.

James J. Coyle is the Director of Global Education at Chapman University, and the executive director of the Caspian Research Institute, an online think tank.

James J. Coyle: We don't have a strategy yet

Published in the Orange County Register on September 10, 2014. To access the original article, click here.

Two and a half years after President Barack Obama ended American military involvement in Iraq, the United States has resumed “limited” air operations in that country. American war planes bombed forces of the Islamic State threatening the Kurdish enclave in the north. The White House is at a loss to explain this tacit admission that the Obama administration’s “success” in withdrawing American troops did not protect American interests in the area.

The President does not know the next step to take. Speaking at a news conference, he admitted “We don’t have a strategy yet.” The lack of planning is a surprise, as a former Pentagon official told Fox news that the President had been given detailed and specific intelligence about the rise of the Islamic state on multiple occasions, and for over a year. The former official described the information as strong and “granular” in detail.

The President’s words may well be his foreign policy epithet. Without considering the potential outcome, the United States stood on the side line when the Muslim Brotherhood replaced decades-old allies in Tunisia and Egypt. Our air force flew ninety percent of the sorties over Libya that resulted in the overthrow of the Gadhafi regime, the eventual murder of our Ambassador, and the current occupation of the US embassy in Tripoli.

Syria is in flames with 150,000 dead in their civil war. That is the equivalent to the death count of 50 World Trade Centers, or 75 Pearl Harbors. The only local group strong enough to confront the Islamic State is the government of Syria, the overthrow of which the US is committed. Iraq is teetering on the edge of a total breakup. In Afghanistan, the Taliban is waiting for America’s withdrawal to retake the country, while the Afghan government cannot choose a successor. Russia has annexed the Crimea and has invaded eastern Ukraine with over 1,000 troops. There is shooting on the cease fire line between Armenia and Azerbaijan. China is making territorial claims in the South China Sea that puts it in conflict with American allies. An ebola outbreak in Africa has infected 3,000 people, killing half. The World Health Organization says the world response to the illness has been inadequate, and the epidemic could spread. Boko Haram is seizing territory in northern Nigeria.

American policy is adrift. The United States remains the sole superpower in the world, with more military and economic might than any other country. For some reason, however, the White House is reacting to events instead of taking charge of them.

The creation of a national security strategy is a simple process to explain, and a difficult process to implement. One must identify American interests in the area. If there are no interests, the strategy should dictate that the United States steer clear. If there are interests, however, the next step is to identify at what point America will employ its levers of national power: military, political, economic, and ideological. The government needs to be clear on the ends, ways and means to be employed to safeguard the U.S.’s interests. They must determine that implementation of that strategy has an acceptable cost, and that the plan is sufficiently robust that it will actually achieve US objectives. The Obama administration published a strategy in 2010. It is time for another, one that the White House can use to protect our interests.

James J. Coyle is the Director of Global Education at Chapman University, and the executive director of the Caspian Research Institute, an online think tank.

Al Qaida in Syria Provides Wake Up Call

James J. Coyle: Al-Qaida in Syria provides wake up call

By JAMES J. COYLE / For the Register

Published: Dec. 12, 2013 Updated: 5:28 p.m.

GETTY IMAGES

Dozens of Americans have tried to join Islamist rebel groups in Syria, according to U.S. officials. They sought to join the estimated 6,000 to 8,000 foreign fighters.

Approximately 2,000 of their number are European. It is easy for these foreign fighters to reach Syria: international flights bring them to Turkey, where there are training camps exclusively for European recruits. From there, they easily slip across the border. Such numbers are troubling, because they represent a serious threat to the West when they return from their jihad in the Middle East.

The threat is not only to the West; Russia faces a similar problem. An Uzbek Salafist in Turkey uses the Internet to recruit in Europe, North America, Russia and Central Asia, according to EurasiaNet. Radical Kyrgyz in Moscow were recruited for the struggle by North Caucasians. Members of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan have left their fighting in Afghanistan and Pakistan to go to Syria. While the number of Central Asians is still small, they have become more prominent in jihadist groups like al-Qaida affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra. One press report says the “most dangerous and barbaric” of the al-Qaida fighters are 250 Chechens in the suburbs of Aleppo.

The group with the largest number of fighters is the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Shams, also known as ISIS. This group has achieved notoriety for fighting as much against other rebels as against government forces. They recently seized the northern Syrian town of Termanin from a rival rebel unit, by seizing the bakery, intimidating the police and beheading those who opposed them. “The executions are designed to make maximum impact,” said activist Firas Ahmad. Jihadists have also kidnapped Kurdish rebel fighters and Orthodox nuns. Most recently, the U.S. government announced on Thursday that they were suspending delivery of non-lethal aid to rebels in Northern Syria because of the reports of the Islamists' seizure of territory from the Free Syrian Army.

The ISIS now control many of the supply lines by which Western powers are trying to resupply other rebel groups. In areas along the border with Turkey in Aleppo and Idlib, the ISIS is also seizing territory held by other hard-line Islamist units, reports the Lebanese Daily Star. Their commander, who goes by the nickname al-Jazaeri, said they had learned their lesson in other conflicts. “Our mistake as mujahidin is that we were preoccupied with fighting [Moammar] Gadhafi and did not pay enough attention to how to hold onto territory,” he told Reuters.

The result is a large swath of territory in the heart of the Middle East under the control of al-Qaida affiliated groups. This area has come to resemble Afghanistan: Islamic schools, training camps and burka-clad women. The threat from these groups, many identified as terrorist organizations, is a common thread that unites Russia and America going into the Jan. 22 Geneva conference talks. The superpowers had appeared to be waging a proxy war in Syria, with Russia and Iran supporting President Bashar al-Assad against rebels backed by the United States, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Recent meetings, however, show that these alignments are no longer true.

The U.S. accepted Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov's suggestion of foregoing military action in favor of Syria's decommissioning of its chemical weapons stockpile. With indications that the Dec. 31 deadline for the removal of 30 tons of chemicals might not be met because the road to the coast might not be safe for transport, there are no renewed American threats. Instead, quiet diplomacy seems the order of the day.

Last week, British and American officials met in Ankara with non al-Qaida Islamist groups. While refusing to name which groups with which he had met, Army Gen. Martin Dempsey said it was important to learn the long-term plans of the organizations. Other officials said the purpose of the meeting was to encourage them to join in the Geneva II peace talks. It would appear that the al-Qaida threat is uniting the international community in unanticipated ways.

James J. Coyle is a professor and the director of Global Education at Chapman University and Chair of the Eurasian Committee of� the Pacific Council on International Policy.� He has been involved with Middle� Eastern affairs for over 30 years.