Game of Houses

This post is actually one where I revisit a subject and check in to see how things are going.  In this case the post I am revisiting is http://sigma5.blogspot.com/2014/09/isis-do-something-stupid-now.html, one I made a little over a year ago.  (I'll explain the title of this post shortly.)  That post started out focusing on ISIS (or ISIL, or Daesh - the controversy over which title is the one that should be used continues to rage).  Then it pulled back to encompass a bigger chunk of the middle east.

So where does the title for this post come from?  It is a major component in an epic fantasy series called "The Wheel of Time" by Robert Jordan.  The meaning is the same as "The Game of Thrones", which comes from the epic fantasy series penned by George R. R. Martin.  The same thing was long referred to as "The Great Game" by the British.  Many have called it "Power Politics"  These are all different names for the same thing.  You have a number of players.  They are all jockeying between themselves.  They employ political and military strategies to achieve their objectives.  And their objectives are increased power and influence relative to the other players.  What's currently going on in the middle east is best understood as a many player Game of Houses where the players for the most part are countries both near and far.

And have I mentioned that George R. R. Martin based his series on the Thirty Years War, a real event from European history.  One of the defining characteristics of this "game" is that there is no end to it.  There is never an ultimate winner although there can be ultimate losers.  The game just keeps going on.  One player maneuvers and gains influence at the expense of one or more other players, at least for a while.  Then they slip or trip or are subject to a piece of bad luck, and their position deteriorates relative to the position of other players, again at least for a while.

No player ever achieves complete dominance and it is rare for a player to be completely destroyed.  This is because players often move to balance things.  A player who is up too far is knocked down.  A player who is down too far is propped up.  You don't want to let anyone else, even an ally, get too powerful and a former enemy may make a good ally in the next round.

Europe played this game for centuries.  The Thirty Years War was just one move in a game that looked like it would go on forever.  There was the Hundred Years War, the Battle of This, the War of That.  It went on and on and on.  First this country (the players are usually but not exclusively countries) is up.  Then it falls back and for a while another country is up.  And so it goes.  In the case of Europe it went on until World War I came along.  World War I was so costly in terms of blood and treasure that the traditional players fell into two groups.

There were the groups that were completely destroyed like Russia, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, The Ottoman Empire, etc. Then there were the groups that were merely severely damaged like The United Kingdom, France, and Germany.  Going into World War I all three of them successfully operated overseas colonial empires.  Germany's was the biggest apparent loser as its colonial empire was dismantled after the war.  The UK and France seemingly fared better but after the War both found it difficult to find the resources to properly operate their old empires.  They kept things together more or less until World War II came along.  This second blow to their power, both financially and militarily, meant that neither colonial empire was able to last long.   The big winners coming out of World War I were the non-players like the US and Japan.  Both had been substantially excluded from the European version of The Game of Houses.

In my previous post I started by drilling down on ISIS and then pulled back for a broader view.  I will get back to my Game of Houses perspective later but first let's see how well my previous post stands up.  The answer is "pretty well".  I got a few things wrong but they were minor.  The big problem is a common one.  I assumed events would move faster than they actually have.  In other words, I did not lean heavily enough on my Game of Houses perspective.  On to specifics.

I questioned whether ISIS (I'm going to stick with this name for clarity) was actually unstoppable, a characteristic frequently attributed to them at the time.  They are now clearly stoppable.  In fact, they have lost territory between posts.  Have they dried up and gone away?  No!

The tensions and rifts caused by the way the boundaries of various countries in the area were drawn has increased.  And a number of those old boundaries no longer have any practical meaning.  But so far no boundaries have been officially redrawn.

Since then the position of the Kurds has strengthened.  They now control territory in what was Iraq and what was Syria.  The Kurds see the territory they control as a single unified country.  But their position has not strengthened enough for them to break away officially from either Syria or Iraq.  So while they have de facto control they do not have de jure (formally recognized) control.  And their very success has worried Turkey enough that Turkey has launched a number of attacks on majority Kurdish areas inside Turkey and has made it harder on the Kurds operating in the territory that used to be part of Iraq or Syria.

This shift by Turkey is one of a number of shifts.  Iraq has replaced al Maliki with Haider al-Abadi.  He has backed off on Sunni persecution.  Iraqi supported forces, now at least partly composed of Sunnis, have made some military gains but progress has been slow, expensive, and painful.

The situation on the ground in Syria has changed in detail but the general picture has remained the same.  There are still lots of factions fighting each other.  Al-Assad is still holding on along the coast.  He is now backed by both Iran and Russia and looks to be able to hold on indefinitely. 

Finally, one thing that has not changed is that there is still no well organized moderate Sunni opposition to ISIS.  In summary, we have a standard Game of Houses situation.  Factions rise and fall but there are no permanent winners.  Instead the churn goes on.  So let's review the current roster of players. And, be warned, there are so many of them I might leave some out.

Iraq has somewhat stabilized.  There is a big piece missing, roughly Anbar province.  But it has been missing since shortly after ISIS emerged.  There is also a smaller missing chunk that is, and since roughly the ouster of Saddam, has been administered autonomously by the Kurds.  This is not an official split but it is a split in practice.  The remainder of Iraq is heavily Shia (most of the other groups were killed or expelled during the US occupation that followed "Mission Accomplished") and is now exporting a lot of oil so it is in good shape financially.  Officially, Iraq's boundaries are the same as they were before 2003 but it seems unlikely to me that it will ever get much of the "disputed areas" back.  We are on the path to partition but we are still some distance away from official recognition of this.

Syria is still the scene of heavy fighting.  Who is winning in this area or that has changed somewhat.  This is mostly due to changes on how much outside support this group or that group gets.  It is not at all clear who will ultimately prevail.  Nor is a clear winner likely to emerge for several years yet.  In addition to a core area that Assad's people continue to control, there is a core Sunni area that ISIS has now maintained uncontested control of for well over a year.  And the Kurds have their own core area.  But that still leaves a large part of Syria that is being actively fought over.

Turkey has shifted somewhat.  They were mostly keeping hands off in Syria and looking the other way as long as the Kurds seemed focused on Syrian and Iraqi territory.  But they have decided that the Kurds are now too big for their britches and have gone back to bombing traditional Kurdish areas within Turkey.  They are also less willing to ignore what the Kurds are up to across the border.  And have I mentioned that they shot down a Russian military plane?  They have decided for whatever reason to pick a fight with the Russians.  These are all classic Game of Houses balancing moves.

Iran has seen its situation improve.  It has been supporting Assad and he has been holding on.  They have been supporting Iraq and Iraq has been doing ok.  Iran has traditionally made mischief in other places like Lebanon.  The news doesn't cover this sort of thing (one story at a time) but the impression I get is that they have dialed back somewhat in these other areas due to the need to focus on Iraq and Syria.  The recently ratified nuclear deal should also help their economy and their general standing in the world.  If they think this "world citizen in good standing" approach is working they may dial back considerably on their support for insurgent groups.

The Israelis and the Palestinians have been suffering from a lack of world media (and other) attention but this mostly seems like same old same old.  The only difference is that the outside players that traditionally backed one side or the other have been distracted by other conflicts.  This has taken some getting used to by both the Israelis and the Palestinians and it remains unclear as to what they are going to do about it.  The eminently sensible idea of settling their differences seems to be off the table on both sides so it's pretty much stalemate.

One country where things look primed for a major change is with Saudi Arabia.  Oil prices have been cut in half over the last year or so.  That means that the Saudis are running giant budget deficits.  They are still several years away from running out of money but if oil prices stay low for four or five years they are in big trouble.  They had a succession a year or so ago and the new guy is feeling his beans.  So Saudi Arabia got directly involved in the war in Yemen.  Iran is involved on the other side.  So the traditional match up between the defender of all things Shiite (Iran) and the defender of all things Sunni (Saudi Arabia) is now playing out directly in Yemen.  So far it is mostly a stalemate, which is bad for Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia has yet to play the role they should be playing with respect to ISIS.  Bombing can hurt ISIS but it can't destroy them.  What's needed is boots on the ground.  I argued, I think persuasively, in the previous piece that US (or European) boots on the ground would be a mistake.  The obvious alternative is Sunni boots on the ground.  But remember these need to be "moderate" boots on the ground.  And the moderate champion is, drum roll, Saudi Arabia.  Except they make a terrible moderate champion.  Go back and reread what I wrote in the previous piece on Wahhabi-ism.  That's the official version of Sunni Islam in Saudi Arabia.

The next problem is population.  Most Muslims, and there are over a billion of them, are Sunnis.  So in general there are lots of Sunni Muslims around.  Just pick out a bunch of moderate ones, train them up, and send them in.  If you are Saudi Arabia the obvious first place to start is from within your own population.  But the population of Saudi Arabia is tiny.  And what population there is has been brought up Wahhabi, not exactly moderate.  So okay, go somewhere else.

How about Egypt?  Big population, check.  Sunni, check.  Political stability, oops.  The same thing is true of Libya.  The suppression of the Arab Spring movement by, among others, the leaders of Saudi Arabia has resulted in there being nowhere to go for moderate Arab Sunni Muslims.  There are lots of moderate Sunni Muslims in places like Indonesia but they are not Arabs and not interested in getting involved.  The countries that should contain lots of available moderate Arab Sunni Muslims are all in turmoil (Egypt, Libya) or places so close to being in turmoil (Jordan) that their governments are not in a position to contribute any troops.  Saudi Arabia has put together a Sunni coalition to oppose ISIS.  But for the reasons I have outlined above it is a completely paper effort so far.  So Saudi Arabia is MIA for the most part in Syria.

Finally, there is the US (and to some extent Europe).  There is a lot of "do something stupid" rhetoric being slung around here.  President Obama is trying to play a long game and not do stupid things.  He is not getting much help and support in his endeavor.  This is in spite of the fact that he is actually one of the most successful players in the region.  He has two giant triumphs.  He got chemical weapons out of Syria and has eliminated the nuclear bomb program in Iran.  Imagine inserting either into the present conflict.  Either would turn the horror up to eleven.  It is bad enough now with hundreds of thousands of dead and millions of displaced.  With either chemical or nuclear weapons it could be worse, a lot worse.

One of the keys to the Game of Houses is to keep the stakes manageable.  In the middle ages kings used to raise an army and then march off to war somewhere.  One of the tricks was to have the war somewhere else.  That way most of the death and destruction was visited on some other country.  Poland used to be one of those "nice place to have a war" places.  Nobody from somewhere else cared how much death and destruction was heaped on the heads of Polish peasants.  So what if a king lost a few soldiers or knights as killed and wounded.  Everybody knows these are dangerous professions.  In the mean time he knows he is not risking his neck or his job.  Even if he looses things in his kingdom will continue on with little or no change.  And if he wins there's the loot and the glory.

And that's what is going on in the middle east.  Sure it's hard on the people who live there.  But the US and Turkey and Russia and etc. can afford the resources they are pouring into the area.  And since most of the death and destruction is being visited on the middle eastern locals that is not a cost borne by Americans (or Turks or Russians or etc.) so it is easy to pretend that it is not our (or their - as in Turkey's, etc.) problem.  The Europeans are dealing with a massive onslaught of refugees but that beats heck out of having a war going on in your country.

We get all up in arms about a few people getting shot or blown up on the domestic front when these deaths are somehow connected to the Game of Houses going on in the middle east.  But this is a misplaced concern.  It is a concern mostly because politicians and the media stir us up continuously about it and we are dumb enough to let them get away with it.  We kill our fellow countrymen in vastly larger numbers on a daily basis than the number killed by all the terrorist attacks put together.  But there are two critical differences.  The most important one is that the media is obsessed with terrorists.  And the other is we are so used to the daily carnage we inflict on ourselves that we no longer notice it.

Over time Europeans came to understand how the Game of Houses was played.  Since World War I no one in the western world has been willing to admit in public that it still goes on and that the rules are the same as they have always been.  So most people are no longer familiar with the rules of this particular game.  And people who are unfamiliar with the rules tend to play badly.  But their play, bad as it is, is much better than their ability to predict how the game will evolve.  This is why pretty much everybody's predictions, but especially the "experts" on TV,  have been and continue to be so wrong so often.

We are seeing this play out as I write this.  Iran and Saudi Arabia are in a big dust up.  It supposedly started because Saudi Arabia executed a Shiite cleric.  Then an embassy got burned in Iran.  Then . . . well it really doesn't matter.  This is just typical Game of Houses play.  The TV people tell us it signals that we are on the brink of the end of life as we know it.  But that's what they always say.  In actuality, it is just a minor move in a mid-level game of the Game of Houses.

So what are my predictions?  What is most likely is that things are going to continue pretty much as they are for some time (years).  One group will be up then it will be another group's turn.  If the US plays it smart and mostly works through the locals and mostly confines our support to behind the scenes efforts then we stand a good chance of doing well in the long run.  The Republican party seems hell bent on sabotaging this approach.  Unfortunately, that means a lot of people in the middle east will be killed and a lot more will be subject to extreme hardship.  But I just don't see any way to avoid it.  There are too many players and if they see us making a strong public move their inclination will be to block us.  (That's how the Game of Houses is played.)  And there are all too many players who can block us if they set their minds to it.

Saudi Arabia is the joker in this game, the player who could break things out of standard play.  It is not clear that they can maintain their traditional way of doing business.  This consists of trying to buy what they want or need.  They have bought off their domestic religious opposition by putting the Wahhabis in charge and funding them way too generously.  Part of the deal is the Wahhabis keep the rest of them in line.  They have used oil money to purchase passivity at home and influence abroad.  The money they spent and continue to spend influencing the US, for instance, is still working just fine.

But what if the oil money runs out?  They have built an economy that only works because it is massively subsidized from oil revenues.  And the Wahhabis are not the only domestic group they have bought off.  But the result of all this is that the ruling family can only maintain its position by playing the Game of Houses within Saudi Arabia.  If they no longer have all that oil money then their house of cards will collapse.  And there will be nothing left.  They do not have a well educated and industrious population.  They do not have strong institutions.  They could be gone in the proverbial blink of an eye.

They owe their regional and international influence primarily to the leverage oil money gives them.  There are a lot of people in the region who resent them.  Their influence outside their borders will evaporate instantly the day the money spigot dries up.  They will be left with nothing.  And their will be a giant vacuum with no obvious successor around.  40 years ago Egypt could have stepped into the void.  But the reaction to the Arab Spring by government after government leaves no government, and especially not Egypt, with any legitimacy left that would allow them to step in.

Well theoretically there is Iran.  But everybody forgets that Iran is Persian.  Arabs and Persians have been hating on each other and fighting with each other for thousands of years.  There may be some short term situational advantage to allying with the hated Persians.  That, after all, is how the Game of Houses works.  But a ceding of real power for the long term to an enemy of such long standing?  Never!

If Saudi Arabia blows up, and I think there is a significant chance they will, then we could see truly massive shifts in the balance of power.  And that could blow up the Game of Houses, at least for a while.  What things would look like when the dust settled, and it could take a long time for the dust to settle, is completely unpredictable.