SPEAKING FREELY Cold War lessons applied to Syria
By Jared Metzker
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest writers to have their say. Please click hereif you are interested in contributing.
If we Americans can say we know anything about the situation in Syria, it is that we don't know exactly what it is or where it is going. Reportage of events there, severely hampered by the tendency of both belligerent sides to target journalists, has given us, at best, a shaky national understanding of who the Syrian rebels are, how their effort is progressing, and what our relationship to that effort is.
For instance, we were initially told the rebels were not, contrary to
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's claim, affiliated with al-Qaeda, yet this month allegiance to America's worst enemy was acknowledged by one of the rebellion's most effective fighting groups. For months, we were made to understand Assad's regime was on the brink of collapse, yet he has persevered. We believed that Washington was not helping to provide arms to the cause, until it was revealed that indeed the CIA was.
President Barack Obama, who we should hope has a better comprehension of the Syrian reality, faces what must be excruciatingly difficult choices in dealing with the conflict. While there are obvious differences, there are also notable similarities between these choices and those faced by president John F Kennedy in forming the policy now infamously known as the Bay of Pigs.
The Bay of Pigs, basically, was a two-phased US plot to overthrow Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. For the first phase, the CIA equipped and trained 1,500 anti-Castro Cuban exiles and facilitated their invasion of Cuba and establishment of a beachhead. Once it was established, the second phase was to have kicked in as the US helped them form a provisional government and foment a general uprising in demand of free elections
Kennedy, seemingly like Obama, was more reluctant than many of his advisers to go to extremes in order to foster the demise of the target dictatorship. That Washington was involved at all in the anti-Castro effort was a fact the young president hoped to keep concealed as much as possible. Once that effort gained steam, however, it became impossible to deny that the US was a major part of it.
While some argue it was Kennedy's fussbudgety concern for America's world image that caused the ultimate failure of the policy, others insist that the plot to remove the dictator and regain influence in Cuba was too ambitious from its inception. There is universal agreement, however, that the plan was never a complete one.
Sufficient consideration was never taken of the complexities involved in the second phase, nor was there a common understanding on how the US would react should the plan fail. The CIA envisaged an overt American military response, while Kennedy imagined the invasion force dispersing into the mountains to fight a protracted guerilla war. This fundamental divergence of understanding led to an incoherent policy that resulted, predictably, in disaster.
Just as the planners of Bay of Pigs were unsure of what would happen once the exiles established their presence on the Cuban beach, so it seems the current administration does not have a definite idea of what Syria will become if rebel preeminence is established and Assad is removed from power. The problem of jihadi prominence on the rebel side is not simply going to disappear if the US shuts its eyes to it. The Al-Nusra Front and its ilk will remain committed to the ideology that was responsible for September 11, 2001, well after Assad is out of the picture. Then what? The moral of the Bay of Pigs story is about the consequences of incomplete planning.
While the status quo in Syria is horrifying, the situation could easily get worse. If Washington is to continue to act to weaken Assad's grip on his country, it needs to decide and fully plan what its phase two will be. It is clearly not in America's interest to have a new Syria which is controlled by jihadists - or one not controlled at all.
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest writers to have their say. Please click here if you are interested in contributing. Articles submitted for this section allow our readers to express their opinions and do not necessarily meet the same editorial standards of Asia Times Online's regular contributors.
Jared Metzker studies American Foreign Policy at The Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). He is at present writing his Master's Thesis on John F Kennedy and the Bay of Pigs.
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