The recent breakdown of the cessation of hostilities (CoH) in Syria has potentially ushered in a new and even darker phase of the Syrian civil war. While it may prove foolhardy to make predictions about what will happen in Syria, the necessity of finding a political resolution for the battered country requires some much-needed foresight. Here I outline three potential scenarios that may help pave the way towards such a resolution.

Another externally-imposed ceasefire

Over the last few weeks, the cessation of hostilities in Syria has looked increasingly unstable. While there have been numerous attacks on rebel-held areas during the past two months, in recent days the frequency of airstrikes (both regime and Russian) has increased dramatically.

The CoH was, for all intents and purposes, imposed by Russia and the US on the other parties to the conflict; it was nominally self-enforced. Violations were reported to US authorities via a telephone hotline, WhatsApp or email in what was a rather lax reporting mechanism with many of its own issues. While numerous analysts thought that the exclusion of Jabhat al-Nusra in the CoH would be its downfall, the overall ‘looseness’ of the agreement appears to have meant that when it better served the interests of a party to break it, they’ve done so.

Nevertheless, the fact that the CoH lasted as long as it has says something about what can be achieved by the major players if their interests align. Herein lies a potential avenue for action. As the war wears on, the al-Assad regime appears to be increasingly reliant on its international and regional backers—Russia, Hezbollah and the Iranian Republican Guards—for economic and military support. There’s also an increasing realisation by the US and Russia that bombing ISIS is only exacerbating the jihadi threat they’re attempting to eradicate. Those disparities, coupled with the relative, albeit limited, success of the first countrywide ceasefire, could be exploited by savvy politicians and policymakers to create a new CoH that combines mutual interests.

Imposing a no-fly zone in southern Syria

After the intervention in Libya, the international community hasn’t shown much appetite for a no-fly zone in Syria. However, somehow alleviating the aerial bombardment of rebel-held parts of southern Syria may be a way to create a viable alternative to regime control in the form of rebel governance that has, and could further, spring up in the south.

The southern governorates of Dara’a, al-Qunaitra and as-Sweida are arguably the best places to first attempt a form of ‘humanitarian corridor’ or no fly-zone. The group that controls much of the area, the Southern Front, is relatively coherent, has deep links with local communities and is purportedly more ‘secular’ than its Western compatriots. These three governorates also directly border Jordan which has made their cooperation and coordination with the US and Saudi-backed Military Operations Centre, located just outside Amman, relatively effective. That existing support could potentially be expanded to encompass the establishment of a no-fly zone via a number of means including: a US, Jordanian or Arab imposed or supported no-fly zone; economic or diplomatic incentives to stop Russia and/or the regime from bombing the area; and/or potentially some sort of limited and well-surveilled surface to air missile program, the murky history of those in Afghanistan notwithstanding.

As Nicholas Heras notes, so far, the al-Assad regime seems to have deliberately destabilised rebel-controlled areas so that governance structures, which could be seen as a competitor to the state, have not had the chance to emerge. That’s because, ‘In the event of any grand bargain struck over Syria, the negotiating power of the Assad-led statelet would likely be enhanced by the destablization of rebel-controlled areas and struggles by the opposition to create a successor state’. While alleviating the terror for civilians caused by constant aerial bombing, a no-fly zone could also boost the negotiating power of the Syrian opposition.

Extension or reconfiguration of local truces

Since the early days of the uprising, siege and starvation have been used by the al-Assad regime as a weapon of war. Local truces were originally envisaged to offer access to food and medical supplies in areas besieged by the regime in exchange for ‘security arrangements‘. Unfortunately, the majority of local truces have a relatively dim history in Syria, but perhaps the idea can be reconfigured and strengthened to allow local truces to play a role in supporting larger, political efforts to end the violence.

That will require the terms of any future agreements to be more specific and preferably in writing, adequate monitoring mechanisms to be put in place and some leverage to coerce signatories into meeting their obligations. As the recent failed effort to provide even the most basic aid to besieged Daraya shows, agreements must be made more transparent and robust if there’s any chance of them being successful initially or part of any larger political effort.

The way forward…

Six years of unimaginable violence necessitates that analysts think outside the box for solutions to the Syrian crisis. Over this time the al-Assad regime has proven itself an incredibly stubborn interlocutor and shown that it won’t change course easily, if at all. However, mounting economic losses combine with the growing realisation that the bombing of ISIS targets by the US and Russia is counter-intuitive to their own security interests, only increasing the strength of jihadi groups. While all players to this conflict are rightly concerned about regime collapse, finding a way of retreating from cycles of violence so life can continue on the ground or a political solution negotiated abroad is more vital now than ever.

‘Things are seldom what they seem’—so wrote the librettist W.S. Gilbert in HMS Pinafore. The current refugee crisis in Europe looks like a humanitarian tragedy on a large scale, the biggest in Europe since WWII. It is. But, more than that, it’s a strategic crisis with profound implications for Europe, the Middle East and the rest of the world.

One of the clearest examples of the law of unintended consequences was the generation of refugee flows from Iraq and Afghanistan in the wake of the decision by the Bush administration to sanction the 9/11 bombings by destroying Saddam Hussein’s government in Iraq and denying al Qaeda use of Afghanistan as a terrorist training ground. As Israel has found to its cost, refugee flows have strategic effects. This is equally true of the growing refugee flows from Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria, not to mention the refugee crisis in North Africa and Yemen.

Just as the vast movement of peoples in the first millennium of the Christian era destabilized the empires of Rome and China, so too the mass migration of people from the Middle East may have long-term strategic effects. There are four that are worth considering.

First, throughout history, among the quickest to flee civil wars are the educated and mercantile classes, taking with them the skills and human resources, not to mention substantial financial assets. Such assets are necessary for the economic reconstruction that is essential to precipitate the restoration of political and social stability. The stories currently being told by Syrian refugees as they arrive in Austria and Germany—often in well-spoken English and French—suggest that the wish for a new life doesn’t contemplate a return home.

Second, at least in the short term, the arrival of hundreds of thousands of refugees imposes enormous economic and social strains on the receiving countries. Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey, are struggling to accommodate millions of desperate people; it’s a struggle made even more difficult by the near-bankruptcy of the principal UN agencies. Indeed, the same problems currently confront Pakistan, with its 1.5 million registered Afghan refugees.

Third, the long-term integration of very large numbers of refugees in receiving countries can generate substantial social and political problems for both the new arrivals and the long-established residents. The rise of the radical right and Islamic terrorist cells in both Britain and France has as much to do with the difficulties of integration as it does with racism and xenophobia. Closer to home, one has only to look at the consequences of Indonesia’s transmigrasi program relocating impoverished Javanese in Kalimantan and West Papua to see how political instability and violence is the inevitable result.

And finally, the translation of historic grievances to distant countries can fuel instability in both the departing and receiving nations for generations. In traditional strategic analysis, warning has three key vectors: extant military capability, the time taken to acquire new military capability, and motivation. Of these three, motivation is the sleeper—something the UK discovered in the lead-up to the Falklands War.

As Australia continues its inexorable slide down the list of wealthy nations (we are currently in the second eleven, and headed for the third eleven within the next two decades), we’ll find that military strength as a means of reinforcing our global authority and influence will increasingly become a sign of impotence instead of power—if it hasn’t become so already.

Good strategy involves moving early to secure long-term advantage. Australia’s future security will be significantly more dependent on a strong rules-based international system and sound regional economic arrangements than on military partnerships, useful though they might be in the short term.

At a time when the UN is deeply stressed and its agencies unable to cope with current refugee, health and food pressures, Australia and like-minded countries would be acting in their long-term best interests by supporting a concerted program of reform and evolution. Short of a major world cataclysm of the kind Philip Bobbitt chronicles in The Shield of Achilles, quick and dramatic reform of the UN is unlikely. But concerted pressure from its membership could lead to the kinds of changes to the structure of the UN Security Council and other agencies that are evidently needed.

As the present global refugee crisis is demonstrating on a daily basis, tokenism and symbolic gestures are the immediate resort of governments—except Angela Merkel’s. The refugees heading towards Europe are numbered in the hundreds of thousands, and millions are already living in impossible conditions in camps across the Middle East—not to mention over 7 million people displaced within Syria itself. Resettlement programs in the thousands are nothing more than vain gestures.

For Australia, there are precedents. Phil Orchard reminded us in his recent post here on The Strategist that the 1989 Comprehensive Plan of Action addressed the Indo-Chinese refugee problem. More recently, Prime Minister Howard’s $1 billion response to the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004 was both immediate and generous.

At a time when Australia is spending over $1 billion per year to keep refugees locked up on Nauru and Manus Island, and $50 million to resettle just four former refugees in Cambodia, the government’s pledge of $44 million looks paltry.  A donation of $1 billion to the UNHCR, together with concerted diplomatic action with like-minded countries to address the global refugee problem systematically, would be an initiative in our own long-term strategic interest.

So far, Australia’s response to the current refugee crisis has been confused, slow, small and unconfident. As Gilbert’s patter-song continued, ‘Gild the farthing if you will, yet it is a farthing still’. This is a case where strategic leadership would also serve the government’s interests well.

There is no more serious decision for Government than to commit Australian forces to conflict. It is not, I believe, one that is ever taken lightly. But should it be ceded to both houses of parliament?

The answer is no.

It’s the longstanding position of the Australian Labor Party that it is the responsibility of the executive to deploy Australian forces. It is a view I share wholeheartedly. The executive carries the moral and political responsibility for this most difficult decision. And it bears the weight of that through its conscience and the ballot box. The parliament does not. Read more

Last week I suggested that Australia takes two steps with regard to those Australians fighting in the Syrian conflict, who’ve been trained by extremist groups and gained battlefield experience.

First, our government should release a comprehensive statement outlining its position on the Syrian foreign fighter issue. There’s no one place for people to find out exactly what Australia’s approach is— what the applicable laws are, the government’s reasons for being concerned about Australian involvement in the conflict, what the government’s strategy is, and what people can do if they have concerns.

Secondly, to get the message through we should have a national awareness campaign about the dangers of citizens travelling to Syria. It should be led by the police working with relevant community-based organisations. Read more

With the centenary of the commencement of WWI looming, many in the blogosphere have been looking for good history books to read. Historian Margaret MacMillan has a Brookings essay entitled ‘The Rhyme of History: lessons of the Great War’ (including short interviews with the author). For a more detailed narrative of Europe in the years leading to the war, there’s also MacMillan’s new book, The War that Ended Peace: the road to 1914. The NY Times rated Christopher Clark’s The Sleepwalkers: how Europe went to war in 1914 one of its ten best books of 2013. For fans of beautiful writing, there’s always Barbara W. Tuchman’s The Guns of August. And over the next four years we should heed Hew Strachan’s admonition to do more than remember.

Earlier in the week, Rosa Brooks asked on Foreign Policy, has the nature of ‘war’ changed since the days of Clausewitz? She says:

Take cyberwar: much of what is often spoken of under the “cyberwar” rubric is not violent in the Clausewitzian sense of the word. Cyberattacks might shut down the New York Stock Exchange and cause untold financial damage, for instance, but would we say that this makes them violent? Or, say cyberattacks shut down the electrical grid for several major cities, and as a result of the loss of power, a few hundred hospital patients on ventilators die. I’m still doubtful that most of us would call this violence in the usual sense of the word.

Sticking with the changing nature of warfare, why is the Syrian opposition disappearing from Facebook?

This week the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) launched Military Balance 2014, IISS’ annual assessment of military capabilities and defence economics worldwide. See here for key summaries on defence spending (infographic below, click to enlarge. Source: IISS), and here for global developments. Another observation from that volume is that drone usage has increased as the costs of acquiring them fall.

A few weeks ago, The National Interest brought you ‘The five best submarines of all time’. This week, here’s their five worst. This follows their five worst fighter aircraft list—which we mention more for completeness rather than recommending it. You can see what The Strategist‘s exec editor thought of it here.

Speaking of technology, here’s footage of Britain’s new unmanned drone, ‘Taranis’, flying in the Australian desert.

US Special Operations Commander, Admiral William McRaven, delivered an impassioned speech in January at West Point of a sailor’s perspective of the US Army. He said:

I learned that taking care of soldiers is not about coddling them.  It is about challenging them.  Establishing a standard of excellence and holding them accountable for reaching it.  I learned that good officers lead from the front.  I can’t count the times that I saw Petraeus, without body armor, walking the streets of Mosul, Baghdad or Ramadi, to share the dangers with his men and to show the enemy he wasn’t afraid.

Lastly, on a lighter note, the Swedish Marines we listed last week have some competition from the Royal Dragoons—or do they? The editorial team think that neither of them can oust the US Army from #1: Lazy Ramadi remains the benchmark.

Events

The Australian Defence Force has teamed up with the Sydney Theatre Company to create The Long Way Home, a theatre production that explores the experiences of ADF personnel on operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and East Timor. Servicemen and women perform alongside professional actors as part of a broader rehabilitation program. The season commences on tonight in Sydney, and runs in major capital cities until mid-April. Details here.

Natalie Sambhi is an analyst at ASPI and editor of The Strategist. Image courtesy Flickr user cwasteson.