It’s decision time for Russia in Syria.

Assad’s future looks more precarious than ever. The HTS-led coalition is on its way to Homs, and if that city is captured, the coastal areas—where Russia’s naval and air bases are located—are effectively cut off from Damascus. (1/7) 🧵 The Russian response has been tepid thus far. The Kremlin is giving statements that it continues to support the Syrian government in its fight against terrorists and has launched some airstrikes in support of Assad’s forces. But the rebel advance southward continues. (2/7)

Israel and Assad's relationship is complicated. (1/5) On the one hand, Israel views Assad as an Iranian lackey, a man who basically turned his country into an Iranian outpost to keep himself in power. Israel has struck Syria hundreds, if not thousands, of times over the last decade to destroy Iranian weapons shipments to Hezbollah. In September, Israeli special operations forces raided an underground missile production facility inside Syria. Netanyahu also warned Assad last week that he's a target if he enables Hezbollah's re-arming. (2/5) nytimes.com/2024/09/12/us/…

The pattern over the last year is well established.

The United States tries to modify Israel's behavior. Israel says thanks but no thanks and does what it wants, ignoring U.S. concerns. And the U.S. eventually falls back in line and supports whatever Israel decides to do. 🧵 There are too many examples to cite, but here are a few.👇

If NATO isn’t willing to go to war with Russia to save Ukraine now, why would it be willing to go to war with Russia to save Ukraine later? Thats a very straightforward question proponents of NATO membership for Kyiv need to ask. I think the answer is obvious: it wouldn’t.

https://twitter.com/dougklain/status/1809693029462340057

Also, McFaul gets it backwards. Bringing Ukraine into NATO is a great way to keep the war going because Putin would have zero incentive—zip—to wind it down. Why stop if he knows membership is around the corner after the fighting ends?

Should the U.S. bomb Houthi targets in Yemen? 🧵 First, some context. According to DoD, there have been 27 Houthi attacks against commercial shipping in the Red Sea area since Nov 19. U.S. and U.K. warships have successfully shot down many of these drones, anti-ship cruise missiles and ballistic missiles before reaching their targets. No casualties or major damage have been reported so far.

An Israeli invasion of Gaza is going to be hell. It’s already hell. But what comes after could be just as worse, particularly if the Israelis find themselves sucked into re-occupying and administering a territory with 2.3m Palestinians. What’s the plan for the day after? 🧵 Hamas is a terrorist organization. But it has also served as the de-facto Palestinian government in Gaza for the last 16 years. Eradicate Hamas and you eradicate the Hamas government. Presumably Israel would want to find a replacement before their troops pull out.

I'm agnostic on Modi. But I do envy India's foreign policy and the way it looks at the world. India is a selfish country—but in an anarchic world system (sorry, the U.N. doesn't count) where there is no global government enforcing global rules, countries need to be selfish. Whereas the U.S. tends to view the world in black-and-white, India sees a complicated world with various shades of gray. Whereas the U.S. views alliances in positive-sum terms, India views alliances as detriments to maximum flexibility. The word "alliance" is anathema.

Wrong. “Working to hasten” NATO membership for Ukraine won’t shorten the war—It will do the opposite. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why: if Putin knows Kyiv will be a NATO member after a Ukrainian victory, he will fight that much harder (and longer) to prevent it. I would also be careful before assuming NATO membership would prevent any Russian military action against Kyiv for eternity. Why on earth would the Russians believe we are willing to fight and die for Ukraine in the future if we clearly aren’t willing to do so in the present?

China and Cuba are seeking to boost their intel relationship, and Beijing is reportedly nearing a deal to build a joint military facility on the island. The U.S. is trying to dissuade Havana. But given the 60+ year embargo, why on earth would Cuba listen? newsweek.com/cuba-china-tie… This specific case is a great illustration of how the embargo—which has failed in every sense of the word—is akin to tying one hand behind our back. Cuba has no incentive to back away from its relationship with Beijing, particularly when the U.S. isn’t offering anything.

U.S. and Iranian officials have been engaged in indirect talks for months. The aim: find a way to deescalate relations and avoid a possible conflict neither side wants. As you might expect, the usual suspects (who created this situation in the first place) are freaking out.

Most of these organizations or individuals will tell you that they aren't opposed to diplomacy with Iran—they're only opposed to a bad deal. Even so, they're allergic to the idea of giving Tehran concessions. Their version of diplomacy is squeezing Iran until they capitulate.

I lot of commentary on how the Iran-Saudi deal reflects a weakening of U.S. power in the Middle East. I would view it another way: China was able to pull this off despite having zero troops in the region, and because it plays both sides of the divide. Opposite of U.S. policy. Also, there’s that little matter called implementation. If this deal (which we still don’t know the full details of) gets sidetracked, slow-rolled or blown up due to the lack of trust btw Tehran and Riyadh, then how much of a “win” would this really be for China in the long-run?

Regime change in Iraq and Libya went swimmingly, so let’s try it on a country with 6,000 nuclear weapons, 10% of the world’s oil supply, and multiple regional schisms.

https://twitter.com/ForeignAffairs/status/1616479445992218626

I heard the same fairytale nonsense in the prelude to ousting Saddam.

So, @ArmsControlWonk has gotten some grief for his @nytopinion piece suggesting the U.S. needs to learn to live a nuclear-armed North Korea. But nobody has come up with a better idea, one that would actually work to solve what is an unsolvable problem. nytimes.com/2022/10/13/opi… U.S. policy on the North has been based on denuclearization for so long that folks seem incapable of thinking outside the box or accepting the reality of the situation. You don’t need to be an expert on the region to know that nukes are the treasures sword of the Kim dynasty.

It’s kind of amazing to me that U.S. officials are just coming around to the realization that North Korea ain’t denuclearizing. wsj.com/articles/u-s-c… “It was a symbol of how many people have come to think that North Korea is a deterrence challenge, no longer a nonproliferation or disarmament one,” said Jeffrey Lewis (@ArmsControlWonk), an arms-control expert at the @MIIS.”

When all of the combatants in a war believe they are winning (or could win) on the battlefield, calls for negotiations go in one ear and out the other. Case study: the war in Ukraine. I’ve been out front screaming for an end-of-war settlement until I’m blue in the face. But even I have come to recognize that this is a largely fruitless exercise when Ukraine and Russia both believe, for one reason or another, they can still achieve their goals militarily.

Italy is boosting gas imports from Algeria. France has signed an energy deal with the UAE. The EU is set to double imports of gas from Azerbaijan. It only took Europe’s worst war in over 70 years to prod the continent toward alternative suppliers. spectatorworld.com/topic/why-puti… It looks increasingly likely that Russia will shut off the gas taps (or taper the flows), causing energy shortages in Europe and possibly shaving two to three percentage points off the E.U.’s GDP. Gasprom has already delivered a warning to its European customers.

Is Russia weaponizing energy? I think so. Should we be surprised Russia is weaponizing energy during a time of war? Absolutely not. In Moscow’s view, the U.S. and the West are weaponizing the financial industry. So in the event Moscow shuts the NS1 taps, wouldn’t be shocked if Russian officials justified it as an eye-for-an-eye or at least brought that up.

Biden has had trouble justifying his trip to the Middle East (for the record, I actually support it). One of the explanations he came up with is that the trip is a critical way of ensuring the region doesn’t get sucked into another war. But the facts don’t really support this. The Middle East is actually quite stable right now, relatively speaking. The war in Yemen, which has created one of the world’s worst humanitarian catastrophes, is at a low ebb courtesy of a three-month truce that is largely holding. Civilian casualties are down by two-thirds.

There’s a huge middle ground between treating Saudi Arabia as a Middle East-version of North Korea and bowing down to the royals like lowly servants. I think Biden sort of gets this. He understands freezing Saudi Arabia out (notwithstanding his campaign rhetoric, which I personally never believed) isn’t really practical as long as the world runs on fossil fuels. Hence his trip to the kingdom on Friday.

This week’s G-20 meeting could get a little awkward for the United States. Why? Because the Global South doesn’t have the same priorities as Washington vis-a-vis the war in Ukraine. Outside the West, it’s about ending the war asap and minimizing the negative economic impacts. These countries aren’t happy that Russia invaded a neighbor, but they also don’t view the conflict as an existential slugfest for the so-called rules-based international order. They also aren’t joining the West’s sanctions regime, which is impacting global food and energy prices.

Russian forces took Lysychansk today after weeks of scorched earth artillery fire. Kramatorsk and Slovyansk are next on the list. The Russians are riding the momentum in the Donbas. But how far can they go without a general mobilization, which Putin desperately wants to avoid? The Russians are no doubt gaining, but at a steep cost in personnel. You can tell it’s taking a toll because Moscow is now offering bigger paychecks to attract new recruits and increasing the enlistment age (the Ukrainians, of course, are suffering mightily as well).