The Long Game (17 page)

The Israelis were alarmed. They had suffered several attacks on their border, yet the Egyptians did little to thwart them. Under the “cold peace” Egypt and Israel enjoyed under Mubarak, the two sides had regular contacts and coordinated security efforts in Sinai. Morsi ended that dialogue, and whenever we pressed him to do more to control the situation, he dismissed the problem as overblown. The Israelis made clear to us privately that they would not sit back and allow a jihadi-infested Sinai to become a threat—and if they were attacked and Morsi still refused to act, they would take matters into their own hands.

B
Y THE SUMMER
of 2013, the situation in Egypt was getting desperate, and the military was poised to step in, topple Morsi, and impose order. Washington went into full crisis mode (coinciding with these events were our rising concerns about Syria, and the August 2013 chemical weapons attacks). While there was no denying Morsi had made a mess of things, we did not want to see a counter-revolution by force. The administration's message to the military leadership was clear: stay in the barracks and out of politics.

Because decades of the close cooperation had built strong trust between the two countries' military establishments, it fell principally to Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel (who had replaced Panetta in early 2013) to convey this message to then-Defense Minister General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. A year earlier, the Egyptian general had been Morsi's pick to lead the powerful army, vaulting over many more officers senior to him (in the early days, there were worries that he was too close to Morsi). But now he seemed ready to move his
president out. Over the course of many phone calls, Hagel asked al-Sisi not to intervene, urging that he instead help Egypt move toward political reconciliation. Hagel cautioned al-Sisi not to follow the example of Mubarak, warning that any move by the Egyptian military—especially violence against pro-Morsi protestors or the Muslim Brotherhood leadership—would inevitably impact Egypt's relationship with the United States, including our willingness to continue unequivocal support for the Egyptian military.

Al-Sisi listened patiently to our concerns. But he remained unconvinced. He said they could no longer suffer Morsi's incompetence, and worse, he asserted the Muslim Brotherhood was in bed with Hamas (which was true) and al-Qaeda (which was not). Al-Sisi saw Egypt in an existential struggle, with the country's very survival at stake. He openly worried about its becoming Islamist like Iran or chaotic like Syria, and seemed desperate for the administration's support. “Do not turn your back on us,” he would plead, and asked several times whether America is “with us in the war on terror or not?”

When the military stepped in and removed Morsi from office and put al-Sisi in power—and then took violent action against pro-Morsi protestors, killing over a thousand people and injuring many more—US-Egypt relations fell into its greatest crisis since the 1970s, and the Obama administration faced yet another formidable test.

I
N RESPONSE TO
the military's ouster of Morsi, many inside the administration and in Congress wanted to punish the new regime swiftly, with some arguing that we should cut off all military assistance. Bringing the curtain down on the relationship did not make much sense to me—while we needed to respond, this would have eliminated what little leverage we had. Moreover, despite our disappointment with al-Sisi's decisions, we were still better off with Egypt as a security partner than without it—Egypt was simply too big to throw overboard.

Recognizing this, Obama wanted to strike a balance, deciding to show his displeasure by canceling a major military exercise and withholding certain items of military assistance—F-16 fighters, Apache helicopters, kits to make Abrams tanks, and Harpoon anti-ship missiles—while continuing to fund the sustainment and maintenance of Egypt's existing military hardware. By doing this, we hoped to generate some leverage to influence the new regime's decisions and get Egypt back on a democratic track.

In an intensive effort of defense diplomacy that lasted several months, Hagel and al-Sisi continued to spend many hours on the phone (I listened in on every call, and tallied nearly thirty hours total), where the Egyptians heard the rationale for these steps and what we wanted to see happen. While not pleased, they accepted that the administration needed to take these actions to address our concerns about the removal of Morsi and violence against protestors—as well as to head off even more severe consequences being proposed by some members of Congress.

But Cairo's patience wore thin. As the months went by, the Egyptians became increasingly agitated, especially as concerns about instability in the Sinai and along the Libyan border became more urgent. They argued that the United States was withholding capabilities, including the Apaches, needed to confront these threats. Complicating things further, our other close regional partners—none of whom were sad to see Morsi go, thinking he was a stooge of Iran—were very supportive of al-Sisi. The Saudis and the Emiratis poured money into Egypt, and the Israelis praised al-Sisi's forceful actions in the Sinai and tough moves against Hamas. Our military colleagues in Tel Aviv claimed that their security coordination with Cairo was as good as it had ever been, and they were incredulous that we seemed ready to throw it all away.

While Egypt's frustrations with us mounted, they resisted engaging in the more comprehensive discussions we sought about the
long-term reform and revision of the security relationship. They also made known that they would look elsewhere for support, making several high-profile overtures to their old Cold War patrons in Moscow. While we never believed Egypt saw Russia as a particularly appealing partner, it made sense for them to hedge their bets and was a reminder to us that Cairo had options of its own.

I
N OUR EFFORTS
to reform the US-Egypt security relationship, we were hindered by a unique funding practice known as “cash-flow financing.” Little understood, but critically important, cash-flow financing is how the United States has provided security assistance to only two countries: Israel and Egypt. Essentially, it works as a credit card, allowing these countries to finance the purchase of American weapons with money advanced to them.

The Egyptians have long valued cash-flow financing. Beyond the prestige, it has allowed them to modernize their military and purchase major weapons over the course of several years (with the additional exception of Israel, every other country that receives US defense assistance has to spend its money year-to-year, making it harder to finance the acquisition of such large systems). By enabling the Egyptians to move away from Soviet-made hardware and by implementing the Camp David peace with Israel, this has served American interests.

But the problem with cash-flow financing has been how it limits the United States—we couldn't simply cut off the assistance even if we wanted to, because Egypt had already spent our money. This model became unsustainable given the political winds that were buffeting both sides. Put simply, we concluded the US-Egypt security assistance program needed to be fixed to be saved.

I
N THE SPRING
of 2015, President Obama decided to allow delivery of the weapons we had withheld for a year and a half. Withholding the assistance was not getting us anywhere—if anything, it had
become counter productive. What little leverage we had over Cairo was diminishing. Obama believes policies should work, and this one wasn't. Although the administration was right to withhold some assistance in response to the Egyptian military's violence against protestors, this policy did not create the incentives we had hoped.

But the decision was not simply caving in. Importantly, Obama announced steps to overhaul the assistance relationship by focusing it on critical areas such as counter-terrorism and border security. The fine print of the president's decision, which most analysts skimmed over, was even more far-reaching: beyond restoring the assistance, it also set in motion changing the way the money has been provided by phasing out cash-flow financing. Essentially, this means taking away Egypt's credit card and instead giving it a debit card, so the weapons purchases will be taken out of Egypt's annual defense allocation. This may sound like an arcane accounting issue, but by putting the US on a path out of a financial straightjacket, this move represents the most significant shift in the security relationship since 1979.

It will take several years to implement, and will cause plenty of heartburn in Cairo and among American defense contractors, who had come to rely on the steady income. But to preserve the relationship in an era that will bring more turbulence, future presidents need greater flexibility in how they can manage the assistance. This doesn't mean a reduction of America's interest or staying power or even resources. At $1.3 billion a year, Egypt will still receive far more military assistance than any other country after Israel. But the shift, while painful and complicated to implement in the short term, puts the assistance relationship on more sustainable footing (and for the US, a more advantageous one).

C
RITICS HAVE HOWLED
at the Obama administration's handling of Egypt from all directions. As Ben Rhodes put it, “We're in that sweet
spot where everyone is pissed off at us.”
²⁴
By continuing the security relationship, some claim the president finally bowed to reality. In their eyes, a military relationship with Egypt is so critical that not only should the US sustain its assistance untouched, it never should have suspended its support in the first place.

Others assert Obama caved to political pressure and turned his back on democracy—and the ambitions he made in his May 2011 speech. They argue we should fundamentally change our relationship with Egypt, perhaps ending (or at least severely curtailing) the military assistance that has been the cornerstone of the relationship for over three decades in the interest of making bold demands for democratic reform.

A third group criticizes the policy's execution, asserting that it left the US with the worst of both worlds: by first suspending the assistance, and then finally letting it go forward, the administration hurt both its credibility in democracy promotion and Egyptian confidence in the United States, hemorrhaging influence along the way. Moreover, this flip-flop created another irritant with countries like Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Israel. By trying to strike a middle path—which failed to generate any new leverage—the administration ended up creating more problems than it solved.

All three of these critiques are justified. It is in the US's interest for Egypt to be strong and secure, and for its military to be modern and capable. And it is in the US's interest for Egypt to pursue democratic reforms and create a more open society based on freedom of expression and the rule of law. While Egypt faces a host of internal problems—its alarming economic plight, demographic youth bulge, and rising insecurity from terrorist threats will be huge challenges for years—the US should want Egypt to be a leader and a stabilizing force in a deeply troubled region. So the question for the US is how best it can position itself to have any influence over the choices Egypt's leaders will make.

Of course, this has to be about more than military assistance (and the US has fallen woefully short on economic help). Yet because of the Egyptian military's primary place in that country's governance and society, and central role of US-Egyptian military ties in the overall relationship, such assistance remains the critical tool of American influence. Although this experience also shows we should not overstate the leverage it gives. As much as Egypt values our support, it is not enough to compel them to do exactly what we want.

That is why President Obama's decision to resume the military relationship—while at the same time fundamentally changing the ways it is financed and spent—was the right one. This effort to modernize the relationship is key to ensuring that US-Egyptian security ties, which have served American interests for many years, remain an investment worth making for the Long Game.

CHAPTER 5

THE TIDE OF WAR

N
o issue has tested the Long Game more than Syria. Nor has any foreign policy dilemma proved more vexing or demoralizing for those of us who played a role in shaping and implementing it.

What started in 2011 as another Arab Spring ember ignited into a regional inferno. In her memoirs, Hillary Clinton accurately described Syria as a “wicked problem”: it defied easy solutions, and all the choices were bad. “Do nothing, and a humanitarian disaster envelops the region,” she wrote. “Intervene militarily, and risk opening Pandora's Box and wading into another quagmire, like Iraq. Send aid to the rebels, and watch it end up in the hands of extremists. Continue with diplomacy, and watch it run headfirst into a Russian veto. None of these approaches offered much hope of success.”
¹
And over time, the choices only became worse.

Looking back on the course of the Syria crisis, it is tempting to see this only as a story of lost opportunities, serial missteps, and inept decision-making. The outcomes have been truly horrific—with more than 300,000 killed, millions of refugees, the rise of the Islamic State,
and a disintegration of regional order that the world will be grappling with for at least a generation. This might seem to be a clear failure of American policy. But when one weighs the possibilities for greater US action alongside competing goals, and the demands of managing trade-offs and risks, it is more accurately a cautionary tale of the limits to American, or anyone else's, power.

“MANAGED TRANSITION”

Early on, the administration settled on the objective of seeking Bashar al-Assad's departure from office. This was initially seen as reflecting the momentum of the Arab Spring, and we thought that Assad would go the way of Mubarak. As the violence spiraled, the administration concluded that Assad's departure would remove the essential driver of the conflict.

Therefore, the more difficult question has been how to achieve this goal while avoiding major risks and exceedingly high costs—developing a policy that, in the totality of American interests, is balanced and sustainable. To listen to the critics, getting Assad to go should have been easier. They argued that because Assad had stubbornly clung to power, Obama either had no strategy to loosen his grip, lacked the fortitude to bring it about, or had given up on the goal altogether.

Yet setting a political objective is not the same as designing a policy to achieve it. Simply because the United States could not wave a wand and make Assad disappear did not mean Obama lacked a strategy. In fact, “Managed Transition” best describes the Obama approach to Syria's future—although the phrase neither qualified as a compelling bumper sticker nor was it ever codified in a strategic document. Obama himself did not use the phrase publicly until the fall of 2015, more than four years after he first said Assad had to go. The United States wanted Assad out, but it wanted the leadership
transition to proceed in a way that would not lead to even greater chaos and bloodshed. The policy debates inside the administration (as well as in the public debate about Syria) resided in the fundamental, and uncomfortable, tension between the two words “managed” and “transition.”

There has never been any doubt that the United States has the power to bring about a transition in Syria. Since 9/11, decapitating brutal regimes was something it had a proven track record of doing quite effectively. But none of those transitions were particularly tidy. After the regimes had been toppled by American military power, the result was further instability, and in the cases of Afghanistan and Iraq, a massive sacrifice of US lives and resources to try to help those countries get back on their feet. While Obama wanted Assad to be gone, he did not want to repeat the mistakes of the past. In discussions at the White House and inside the Pentagon, we knew we could use military force to end Assad's regime, and discussed many ways to do so. Yet we always got stuck on the question of what would come next. In these kinds of situations, Obama later said, “we have to refrain from jumping in with both feet.”
²

That is why there was such emphasis on having Assad's departure be “managed.” The best outcome would be for Assad to leave as part of a negotiated settlement, in a way that would allow a transitional government to take hold and basic order to be preserved. We wanted to give the Syrian opposition a stake in the outcome and establish the context for the international community to provide support. We didn't want the entire government to implode and create the kind of chaos we saw in Iraq. We wanted to be sure that in any transition, our core security interests would be met—especially, up until mid-2014, ensuring that chemical weapons would remain secured. So by pressuring Assad through economic, political, and military pressure, we hoped to achieve his departure through diplomacy.

The problem was that Assad never seemed tempted to leave. This surprised us—early in the crisis, most officials believed Assad lacked the necessary cunning and fortitude to stay in power. He was being kept afloat by the lifeline from his principal backers, Russia and Iran. Perhaps, like Saddam and Qaddafi, he was just delusional about his popularity and the nature of his enemies. Whatever the reason—and it was likely a combination of factors—a managed departure seemed far away. As things in Syria got worse, the conversation turned to risking more forceful steps to bring about a transition.

W
E WERE ALWAYS
dangling between the horns of the policy dilemma; whether one placed more emphasis on “managed” or “transition” determined the moves you advocated and the risks you could live with. We considered steps to bring about a quicker, less-managed transition—hoping the regime would topple by increasing the pressure or intervening directly with military force—we kept returning to the consequences and the costs we would then have to carry.

At the Pentagon, the two military options we considered most carefully were to create a “no-fly zone” over Syria and a “buffer zone” or “safe area” inside Syria, along the border with Turkey. These also happened to be the most popular ideas among commentators and our regional partners. Both seemed appealing. Eliminating Assad's air power would remove a crucial military asset, and a safe zone would be a place for internally displaced Syrians to shelter and perhaps serve as a base from which the Syrian opposition could operate. Yet as we explored these options beyond the first move, the questions became much more difficult, as it was hard to see how they would actually solve the core problem—or prevent further escalation.

Creating a no-fly zone seemed easy enough in theory, but grounding Assad's air force seemed unlikely to be decisive. The US military had maintained a no-fly zone in Iraq for over a decade after the first
Gulf War, but this did not ease concerns about Saddam's effort to develop WMD. In Bosnia in the 1990s, the NATO-enforced no-fly zone did not prevent ethnic cleansing on the ground. In Libya, a no-fly zone would not have prevented the regime's forces from fighting. So if one wanted to use American air power to make a difference, it would have meant a similar kind of “civilian protection” mission as we had in Libya, a substantial undertaking few advocated.

The “safe area” concept was even more uncertain. Our Turkish colleagues were particularly enthusiastic about this idea—which they called a “safety belt”—arguing that it would be a way to relieve the tremendous Syrian refugee crisis they were grappling with (which would, of course, eventually explode into Europe). We started talking seriously with the Turks about this idea in the fall of 2012, establishing a formal military working group to explore the possibilities.

In meeting after meeting, Turkish officials presented us with detailed maps about where such safe areas could be located and how they could be configured. We pursued these discussions at great lengths over many months. But they always got hung up on the same issues: how we would enforce these areas, how they would be administered, who would provide the troops, and what would happen if they came under attack.

As one of my White House colleagues put it at the time, a safe zone would be like a “tethered goat”—if attacked, and it almost certainly would have been, we would be obliged to defend it. The lawyers asked what legal authority we would have to do this (since there was no chance we would get a UN authorization given Russian opposition, and a safe zone would technically violate Syrian sovereignty). No one wanted American troops to protect a safe zone and, unsurprisingly, no other country came forward with a credible commitment. Although there were assertions that other countries would step up to help if only we took the first step, there was little evidence that
this would be true—it was hard to escape the implication that, in the end, the United States would again be left holding the bag.

M
OREOVER, FOR THE
first several years of the crisis, concerns about Syria's chemical weapons stockpiles colored every aspect of the administration's discussions about how much it could ratchet up the pressure on Assad. We viewed chemical weapons as his most lethal trump card; if we pushed too hard he could unleash havoc. Or, if the regime suddenly collapsed with its state institutions hollowed out, as had happened in Iraq and Libya, then the weapons could easily become vulnerable to theft. We had visions of the massive looting in Iraq that had taken place after the fall of Saddam in 2003, except instead of museums and government buildings, this time it would be chemical weapons sites. In the effort to get rid of Assad, we did not want to create an even more terrifying security threat with chemical weapons on the loose—something that we rightly would have been held responsible for.

Although the administration stressed the importance of Assad's departure as the political objective, during 2011-14 chemical weapons were seen as a higher priority for America's security interests. This presented a dilemma. After the deal with Russia to remove the chemical weapons, the regime was a necessary silent partner in relinquishing its stockpiles. When that process was complete in mid-2014, the largest obstacle to putting more pressure on Assad was removed, as we no longer needed his regime to help get the chemical weapons out.

The deal to get chemical weapons out of Syria also taught different lessons, shaping both the US and Russian approach toward the conflict in the years to come. In Washington, this showed that Russia had leverage over Assad, and that when pressed it would use its influence to get the regime to relent. Yet Moscow took away something else: that Assad was indispensable to get anything done inside Syria.

T
HROUGHOUT THE
S
YRIAN
crisis, President Obama has resisted any proposal that would have led to the United States owning the problem outright. He was as candid about this in his public statements as he was clear to his aides behind closed doors. When asked in a 2013 interview how he weighed what to do about Syria, the president recited the kinds of questions he had consistently raised privately: “Would a military intervention have an impact? How would it affect our ability to support troops who are still in Afghanistan? What would be the aftermath of our involvement on the ground? Could it trigger even worse violence or the use of chemical weapons? What offers the best prospect of a stable post-Assad regime?” Describe for me specifically what will work, the president would demand, and if you can make a case we can get this done, we'll do it.

Obama believed that while acting might provide short-term satisfaction, in the end it would do more harm than good. It was not that Obama was seeking to avoid military intervention at all costs, but because he was cognizant about the implications for his overall global strategy. Such decisions are not made in isolation from other interests. With deeper intervention, Obama warned in 2014, “there was the possibility that we would have made the situation worse rather than better on the ground,” and US involvement would have meant “we would have the fourth war in a Muslim country in the span of a decade.”
³

The logic of Obama's concerns was compelling—and he had been warning about it since he first ran for president. Writing in
The Audacity of Hope,
he was very clear about the “script” the United States needed to avoid. Once the US intervened in such conflicts, it would “spur insurgencies based on religious sentiment and nationalist pride, which in turn necessitates a lengthy and difficult US occupation, which in turn leads to an escalating death toll on the part of US troops and the local civilian population. All of this fans anti-American sentiment among Muslims, increases the pool of potential
terrorist recruits, and prompts the American public to question not only the war but also those policies that project us into the Islamic world in the first place.” This was the clear lesson of Iraq, yet many critics chose to ignore or dismiss it, as though the conflict had never happened. Puzzled by this amnesia, Obama agreed with Secretary Gates, who said in a 2011 speech that anyone who advised sending a big land army back into the Middle East “should have his head examined.”
⁴

So we found ourselves in an uncomfortable box—we wanted Assad to go, but not if the cost entailed significant military intervention. As we sought a managed outcome, with diplomacy slowly plodding along, one grappled with the painful realization that a political transition away from Assad was not coming anytime soon. Meanwhile, Syria was burning.

HISTORY'S GHOSTS

To help understand how many officials in the Obama administration—including me—approached the Syria crisis, one must pause to take a brief historical detour. For in many ways, the roots of the debate about what to do in Syria go back to the 1990s debates about the Balkans—starting with the Srebrenica massacre more than two decades ago.
⁵

In July 1995, Bosnian Serb forces killed nearly 8,000 innocent Muslim civilians in Srebrenica, a small valley town in eastern Bosnia. This massacre—the worst atrocity in Europe since World War II, one that occurred while UN peacekeepers stood by fecklessly and NATO refused to intervene—shamed the international community, and its lessons have loomed over the debate about American military intervention ever since.