National Security

Ilham Ahmed, co-president of the Syrian Democratic Council, the political wing of the Kurdish forces fighting with the United States in Syria, had an impromptu meeting with President Trump at his Washington hotel Tuesday. (Hussein Malla/2017 AP photo)

By Karen DeYoung Washington Post

January 29 at 5:45 PM

More than a month after President Trump announced that U.S. forces were leaving Syria, there has been no sign of troop departures or a change in the relationship between Americans and their Syrian Kurdish allies, according to the leadership of the political umbrella organization of the Kurdish fighters.

“There has been no change in the situation on the ground,” said Ilham Ahmed, who heads the executive committee of the Syrian Democratic Council. The situation is “just like before” Trump’s announcement, she said.

Trump administration and defense officials have provided little information on how the departure is being organized, or on what timeline. Acting defense secretary Patrick Shanahan said Tuesday that the military continued a “deliberate, coordinated, disciplined withdrawal” from Syria but that the process remained in the “early stages.”

Fighters of the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Defense Forces, who have led the ground fight against the Islamic State in Syria, have expressed concern over the withdrawal, and Shanahan, at a Pentagon news conference, said “99.5 percent plus” of militant-controlled territory had been returned to the Syrians. “Within a couple of weeks, it’ll be 100 percent.”

The Defense Department announced on Jan. 11 that a withdrawal had begun, but it appeared to cover only the packing up of limited amounts of equipment.

Trump said last month that the defeat of the militants meant the United States no longer had a mission in Syria and that about 2,000 U.S. troops there were “coming home now.” After criticism from Congress — and the resignation of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis in protest — Trump said the withdrawal timeline would be flexible.

Much of the criticism stems from fears that the Syrian Kurds, who control much of liberated eastern Syria under U.S. auspices, would be left vulnerable to attack by Turkey, which considers them terrorists and objects to their presence on its border with Syria.

Turkey has promised to attack them and has called for a ­20-mile-wide buffer zone that it would patrol on the Syrian side of the border.

Ahmed is in Washington to try to understand and influence U.S. policy and ensure that the Kurds are protected — as Trump has promised.

Although she was not scheduled to meet with the president, Ahmed had an impromptu exchange with him Monday night, when they were dining separately at Trump’s hotel in Washington. Trump was attending a Great America Committee fundraiser.

Introduced to her, Trump shook her hand and exclaimed, “I love the Kurds,” Ahmed said. She thanked him and asked that he not “let the Kurds be slaughtered” by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, she said. Trump responded by telling her not to worry, that the Kurds were “not going to be killed.”

In addition to calling for the buffer zone, Erdogan has said the Turkish military would take over the fight against Islamic State remnants in Syria. Though Trump has voiced approval of that plan, U.S. military officials have expressed skepticism about Turkish capabilities and intentions.

Over the past several weeks, top U.S. diplomatic and military officials have met with their Turkish counterparts, beginning with an early January trip by national security adviser John Bolton. Erdogan canceled a scheduled meeting with him after Bolton said that protection of the Kurds was a precondition of a U.S. withdrawal.

Instead, Turkey has demanded that the United States remove the Kurds from the border area and provide air and logistical support for Turkish military actions against “terrorists” in Syria. Speaking to members of his Justice and Development Party on Friday, Erdogan said, “Our patience is not unlimited. We are not going to wait for eternity for the promises given to us to be fulfilled.”

“We expect the promise of a safe zone . . . to come into place within a few months,” he said. “Otherwise, we will create it.”

Erdogan, who visited Moscow last week, said he also expected Russia to help.

Ahmed, the Kurdish political leader, said that Turkish establishment of a safe zone in Syrian territory was unacceptable, and she called for international observers in the area. “Nobody has discussed this with us,” she said of the buffer zone.

She also denied what Erdogan has said was a U.S.-Turkish agreement that heavy weaponry given to Kurdish forces for the anti-Islamic State fight would be returned when the militants were defeated.

“There is no agreement like this,” Ahmed said. “There has never been a discussion about removing the weapons from us.” The Islamic State is “still there,” she said of Syria.

In the absence of firm U.S. assurances, she said, the Kurdish forces have been discussing their future with both Russia and the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Paul Sonne contributed to this report.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/kurdish-leader-sees-no-sign-of-us-withdrawal-in-syria/2019/01/29/2b6ef6ca-23f0-11e9-90cd-dedb0c92dc17_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.603d0ebf5c46

Despite recently closing hundreds of bases in Iraqand Afghanistan, the United States still maintains nearly 800 military bases in more than 70 countries and territories abroad—from giant “Little Americas” to small radar facilities. Britain, France and Russia, by contrast, have about 30 foreign bases combined.

By my calculation, maintaining bases and troops overseas cost $85 to $100 billion in fiscal year 2014; the total with bases and troops in warzones is $160 to $200 billion.

These costs have heightened debate over whether the United States needs so many bases abroad: What effect do they have around the world, and are they really making us safer?

The first step is looking at where U.S. bases are, and where they’re most prevalent. For my forthcoming book,  Base Nation, I compiled a near-comprehensive list of overseas U.S. bases, including smaller cooperative security locations (“lily pads”) and suspected but unconfirmed sites (“unconfirmed lily pads”).

Mapped all together, this data, which comes from the Pentagon’s annual Base Structure Report and additional government, news or academic sources, helps to show just how far America’s reach is.

Graphic by 5W Infographics.

Italy

Hundreds of bases in Europe have closed since the 1990s, but the base and troop ( 11,500) presence in Italy has been relatively constant. Recently, the military has built new bases and expanded Africa-focused operations in Sicily.

Japan

During the Cold War, U.S. forces occupied hundreds of bases in Japan and the Pacific to surround China and the Soviet Union. Since 1995, anti-base protests have escalated in Okinawa, where there are still more than 30 bases.

Honduras

A “temporary” base has existed since 1982, allowing officials to claim there’s no U.S. base in Honduras while circumventing the Honduran constitution’s prohibition against a permanent foreign troop presence. Some suspect the base’s involvement in a 2009 military coup.

Burkina Faso

A “cooperative security location” in Ouagadougou reflects a new generation of small, clandestine “lily pad” bases appearing in countries with little previous U.S. military presence. At least 11 such bases in Africa host special operations forces, drones and surveillance flights.

Iraq

There were 505 bases at the U.S. occupation’s height, but the Iraqi parliament rejected the Pentagon’s wish to keep 58 “enduring” bases after the 2011 withdrawal. U.S. forces have occupied at least five bases since 2014 and are considering more installations.

Thailand

The Pentagon rents space at U-Tapao Naval Air Base from a contractor, allowing U.S. and Thai officials to insist there’s no U.S. “base” and no inter-governmental basing agreement. The base was a major logistics hub for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

Philippines

The Philippines evicted U.S. forces from massive bases in the 1990s. Since 2002, at least 600 U.S. troops have deployed to help Filipino forces combat insurgents from some seven lily pads; 6,000 U.S. troops have operated temporarily under the cover of military exercises.

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/06/us-military-bases-around-the-world-119321

By George Friedman January 29, 2019 Geopolitical Future

Vladimir Putin failed to keep his promise to create a modern economy. Now he has to pay the price.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s trust rating has fallen to its lowest point in 13 years. According to a poll conducted by the Russian Public Opinion Research Center, only 33 percent of Russians said they trusted the president. Polls can be unreliable and opinions fickle, but a survey like this in a country like Russia can be an indicator of deep discontent arising from significant social and economic problems.
Hope Fades

Over a quarter of a century ago, the Soviet Union fell because things stopped working. The state was the center of society and managed the economy. After Josef Stalin died, there was a sense of hope in Russian society about the economy – and that hope sustained the government, even when it failed to meet expectations. But by the 1980s, ordinary Russians’ belief that they could provide for their families and that the gulf between them and the nomenklatura (or bureaucratic elite) would diminish had faded. What changed their minds was not envy or anger – Russians had grown to expect a certain level of inequality – but a lack of hope. They had little and were not going to get more. Worst of all, they lacked hope for their children.

This situation was a result of four factors. First, the inherent inefficiency of the Soviet apparatus, which could not build a modern economy. Second, the divergence of available goods, not only to the elite but also to a thriving black market that frequently operated in foreign currencies, which most Russians lacked. Third, the decline of oil prices, which shattered the state budget. And finally, a surge in defense spending, designed to both match U.S. spending and convince Russians that although they might be poor, they still lived in a powerful country. This was not trivial for a nation that had lived through the German invasion.

In 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed, there was no revolution. There was simply exhaustion. The elite were exhausted from trying to push the boulder of the Soviet economy and society up a steep hill. And the people were exhausted from standing in lines for hours to buy basic necessities. The general sense of failure was apparent not only in faraway capitals but in Russians’ own lives.

The Politburo selected Mikhail Gorbachev to solve these problems. He promised openness and restructuring. But the openness only revealed the catastrophic condition of the economy, and the restructuring, carried out by those who had created the disaster in the first place, didn’t work. All Gorbachev did was legitimize the fears and fatigue that had festered in the Soviet Union and allow them to eat away at what was left.

Boris Yeltsin replaced him but did nothing to solve the lingering economic problems. The Soviet Union was gone, and many took advantage – from Western financiers, consultants and hustlers, to Russians who figured out, frequently with Western advisers, how to divert and appropriate what little wealth Russia had. Privatization requires some concept of the private. In a country that had lived for generations by the old socialist principle “money is theft,” the oligarchs embraced the concept with a vengeance. Russia’s nomenklatura was just as inefficient as the Soviet Union’s, and, as shown in Kosovo, other nations held it in contempt.

Yeltsin couldn’t last. His replacement was Vladimir Putin, who had roots in the old Soviet Union and in the new Russia. He had been an agent of the KGB, the Soviets’ main security service. (For a country as vast and poorly connected as Russia, a strong central government and secret police have always been key to holding the nation together.) And through his time as deputy to the mayor of St. Petersburg, he was enmeshed with the oligarchs who became the holders of Russia’s wealth.

Putin came to power because of these connections. After Yeltsin, Russians craved a strong leader, and they drew comfort from the fact that Putin had ties to the KGB. They accepted his links to the oligarchs as simply part of how the world works.

Putin’s Promises

Putin promised to make Russia prosperous and respected in the world. To do so, he had to build a modern economy. Russia was highly dependent on the export of raw materials, particularly oil and natural gas. Putin couldn’t control the price of these commodities, so Russia was always vulnerable to fluctuations in global supply and demand. Putin had a choice: allow the economy to deteriorate and the country to descend into chaos, or centralize governance once more. He chose recentralization, concentrating power in Moscow and distributing funds from the state budget to the regions. When oil prices were over $100 per barrel, Putin had an opportunity to make massive investments in new industries. But he was beholden to the oligarchs, and they to him. Any economic reforms could have jeopardized this relationship. It’s not so much that Putin missed the chance to modernize but rather that his path to power prevented it.

Then, in 2014, oil prices plunged. Though they have recovered somewhat from their lowest point, they remain low. Western sanctions have also taken a toll. Until 2018, Russia had two reserve funds, stocked with profits from the oil boom. But following the collapse in energy prices, one fund was depleted, and since January 2018, only the National Wealth Fund remains. To try to replenish the state budget, Putin decided to reform the pension system. Just seven months after his re-election in March, he signed an unpopular bill into law that will gradually raise the age of retirement for women from 55 to 60 and for men from 60 to 65.

Hence the 33 percent trust rating. That rating is more socially significant in Russia than it would be elsewhere. Putin promised to make Russia a modern, powerful nation. He has failed to deliver on the first point, and his forays in Syria and elsewhere haven’t compensated for deteriorating economic conditions. Older Russians are reminded of what was and what had been abolished; younger Russians are encountering conditions similar to those their grandparents told them of.

There are two possible paths forward. One is the old Russian solution of empowering the secret police to crush the opposition, though it isn’t clear that today’s Federal Security Service, or FSB, has the same power its predecessor organizations had. I suspect that the poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain is intended in part as a message to the FSB, not only to frighten it but also to tell its agents that they need to uphold the integrity of the Russian nation.

The other path is a re-enactment of the fall of the Soviet Union. Few are eager to relive the 1990s, but collapse is not always the result of a vote. If oil prices remain low, sanctions remain in place, reserves continue to dwindle, and the FSB is more interested in doing business than in sacrificing for the Russian state, then it’s hard to see an alternative scenario.

No foreign power can come to Russia’s aid. Each one demands too much and offers too little. There’s a fantasy in Russia about an alliance with China, but Moscow is far away from Beijing, and China’s problems at the moment are even more intense. The Kremlin could try engaging in a war to boost morale, but there’s the risk it could lose or that the conflict would last longer than those at the top anticipate.

Russia now faces conditions similar to those it faced in the 1980s: low oil prices and high defense costs. The people aren’t angry, but they are resentful, and in due course they may become simply exhausted, as they were in the 1980s. Russia is vast and needs a strong central government to hold it together, but central governments are not good at managing economies. Thus, the secret police must hold the country together. If it can’t or won’t, then a Gorbachev-type leader may rise up to reform the economy, and a Yeltsin-type leader may follow to preside over the nation’s revolutionizing.

Karl Marx once wrote that history repeats itself, first as tragedy and then as farce. How this maxim may play out in Russia is becoming clearer by the day.