What Washington Should Do
- Work for a peace settlement that minimizes
Israel's long-term security risks.
For
Israel, the Golan Heights are an irreplaceable strategic asset. The
450-square-mile buffer zone gives it strategic depth against a
formidable Syrian armored force that is capable of rapidly
mobilizing and launching a surprise attack from prepared positions
close to the border.
Strategic depth is important because it
buys time for Israel to mobilize its own armed forces, which are
much smaller than Syria's and much more reliant on the mobilization
of reserve forces. Although the proliferation of ground-to-ground
missiles has lessened the importance of strategic depth, wars
ultimately are won on the ground, as the Gulf War proved. Although
Syria is not strong enough to defeat Israel in a war by itself,
Israeli leaders must consider the potential Syrian threat in
conjunction with other Arab threats. For example, Iraq has
dispatched forces to Syria or Jordan to help them fight Israel in
three Arab-Israeli wars.
If
it surrenders the Golan, Israel will be taking asymmetrical risks:
It will be making a concrete concession that undermines its
security in exchange for an easily reversible promise of peace that
could easily be exploded by Assad, his successor, or a new Syrian
regime. Washington therefore must try to shape a settlement that
mitigates the security risks as much as possible. For example:
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Borders.
Syrian demands for restoration of its sovereignty over the Golan
theoretically could be reconciled with Israeli security demands by
allowing Israel to lease a strip of the western Golan from the
Syrians for several decades. Retaining such Israeli control over
the western cliffs overlooking Israel's Hulah valley would ease
concerns over Syrian artillery or sniper attacks, such as those
that frequently occurred before the 1967 war, and give Syria the
opportunity to demonstrate its good faith. If Syria rejects this,
then the border should revert to the international border
negotiated between the British and French colonial powers in 1923.
This border, which runs slightly east of the 1967 line of control,
would deprive the Syrians of territory that they conquered by force
between 1948 and 1967.
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Mount Hermon.
Israel's early warning facilities, located on a 7,300-foot-high
ridge of Mount Hermon roughly 26 miles southwest of Damascus, offer
unimpeded surveillance of Syrian air space and military bases for
which there is no topographical substitute inside Israel. Israel
should be allowed to retain its personnel on Mount Hermon.
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Demilitarized Zones.
Territory that Israel returns to Syria should be totally
demilitarized; Syria should be allowed to deploy small numbers of
police on that territory, but no military personnel. Syrian
military forces also should be thinned out in western Syria, with
tight restrictions placed on the deployment of Syrian armored
forces and heavy artillery.
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Help compensate Israel for the loss of the
Golan Heights.
The
United States can help compensate Israel for the loss of the Golan,
but it cannot fully replace it.
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Aid.
Washington should provide aid for the relocation of Israeli
military forces and bases from the Golan. However, it should not
provide compensation for the 17,000 Israeli settlers on the Golan
who moved there over American opposition.
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Intelligence.
To upgrade Israel's early warning capabilities, Washington should
provide Israel with a ground station that is capable of downloading
real-time intelligence from U.S. intelligence satellites that are
monitoring Syria. This would guarantee Israel a continuing source
of military intelligence concerning Syrian military deployments if
Israel's monitoring facilities on Mount Hermon were knocked out in
a war. Unmanned aerial vehicles, such as the Global Hawk currently
being developed by the United States, also could help Israel
maintain surveillance over the Golan border region.
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Arms.
To help Israel maintain its qualitative military superiority, the
United States can provide advanced arms capable of defeating a
Syrian armored thrust, such as Apache helicopters, J-STARS airborne
radar aircraft, and MLRS (Multiple Launch Rocket System)
surface-to-surface missiles. Washington should also provide
Tomahawk cruise missiles to give Israel standoff weapons that can
strengthen deterrence against a Syrian attack.
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Require Syria to crack down systematically
on terrorists.
Syria long has used terrorism as an
adjunct of its foreign policy. It gives sanctuary and political,
military, and financial support to a wide variety of Palestinian,
Lebanese, Turkish, Kurdish, and other terrorist groups.
Despite its flirtation with the peace
process, Syria continues to support Palestinian groups opposed to
the 1993 Oslo Accords, including Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic
Jihad, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of
Palestine-General Command. In Lebanon, Syria cooperates with the
radical Islamic Hezbollah militia, which was responsible for the
1983 bombings of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut and the Marine
peacekeeping compound near the Beirut airport, as well as the
kidnapping of 15 American hostages in Lebanon between 1984 and
1991. Damascus also has supported the Kurdish Workers Party, which
has waged a bloody terrorist campaign against Turkey since 1984 in
a vain effort to carve out a separate Kurdish state in eastern
Turkey.
Turkey scored a major victory against
terrorism when it threatened military action to force Syria to
expel Abdullah Oculan, the leader of the Kurdistan Worker's Party
(PKK), and 300 of his followers in October 1998. Assad bowed to
Turkey's ultimatum to halt Syrian support for the PKK when
confronted with Turkey's resolve and growing military cooperation
with Israel, as well as the perception that the PKK had become a
liability.
The
Clinton Administration must drive home to Assad that supporting any
terrorist group is a liability. In the past, the Administration has
taken a lax attitude toward Syrian support of terrorism. For
example, President Clinton lauded the establishment of a
Syrian-American working group as a major achievement of his 1994
meeting with Assad, but the working group "met once and was never
heard of again."
The
Administration reportedly has deferred discussion of Syrian support
for terrorism while it focuses on advancing the peace
negotiations. But Assad will
retain his terrorist surrogates unless he is pressured firmly to
abandon them. The Clinton Administration should demand that Syria
disband, disarm, and expel all terrorist groups based in Syria or
Syrian-controlled Lebanese territory and cooperate in arresting and
extraditing the leaders of all terrorist groups--not just the
Palestinian groups.
- Require Syria to end its strategic
cooperation with Iran and halt the flow of Iranian supplies to the
radical Shiite Hezbollah militia in Lebanon.
Syria is one of the few Arab states that
cooperates closely with Iran. Damascus supported Iran in its
1980-1988 war against Iraq and allows Iran to deploy several
hundred Revolutionary Guards in the Syrian-controlled Bekaa Valley
in eastern Lebanon. These Iranian militants train Hezbollah and
other terrorists and supply them with arms transported through
Syria. The Clinton Administration should insist that Syria block
this supply line and expel the Iranian Revolutionary Guards from
Lebanon.
- Require Syria to end its support for drug
smuggling and counterfeiting operations in Lebanon.
Syria has become an important transit
country for illegal drugs, particularly hashish and heroin, some of
which is being refined in Syria. Much of the drug trafficking
originates in the Syrian-controlled Bekaa Valley, and "Syrian
officials are widely reported to have profited from facilitating
the sale and transit of Lebanese-produced hashish and heroin
destined for Europe and the United States." Syria also is
suspected of cooperating with Iran in distributing high-quality
counterfeit U.S. currency through terrorist groups and smuggling
rings in Lebanon.
- Require Syria to assist in containing
Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
The
Clinton Administration should press Syria to cooperate in
containing the regime of Saddam Hussein in neighboring Iraq. There
is no love lost between Assad and Hussein, long-time rivals for
leadership of the Arab world who lead competing wings of the Arab
Socialist Baath (Renaissance) party.
At a
minimum, the United States should insist that Syria close its
border to Iraq to curtail illegal trade that is circumventing the
United Nations-sponsored economic sanctions against Iraq. If
Damascus hopes to pry foreign aid out of Washington, it should be
required to give sanctuary and support to the Iraqi National
Congress, the leading opposition group that is fighting Saddam's
brutal regime, and allow the United States to base aircraft on
Syrian territory to enforce the no-fly zones in Iraq.
- Work to build a stable, independent
Lebanon.
Roughly 35,000 Syrian troops occupy much
of northeastern Lebanon. Syria initially intervened in Lebanon in
1975, ostensibly as a peacekeeping operation under the auspices of
the Arab League. But at the 1989 conference on Lebanon sponsored by
the Arab League in Taif, Saudi Arabia, Damascus agreed to a phased
withdrawal of Syrian troops to the Bekaa Valley in eastern Lebanon,
and to negotiate subsequently with the Lebanese government on the
future status of its forces. Instead, Syria has extended its
control over Lebanon, occupying almost 90 percent of the country
north of Israel's security zone in October 1990 and establishing a
stranglehold on Lebanese politics.
The
Clinton Administration should press Syria to abide by the Taif
agreement and allow the Lebanese government to expand its control
over Lebanese territory. Washington should stress that if Damascus
cannot fulfill the commitments it made at Taif to other Arab
states, it should not expect to be considered a reliable
negotiating partner that is likely to fulfill commitments it makes
to Israel or the United States.
- Consult with Congress before making any
commitments.
President Clinton should consult
congressional leaders in a timely manner before making any
commitments for diplomatic, military, and foreign aid that his
successor and Congress would be forced to deliver in the future.
The $1.9 billion aid package for Israel, Jordan, and the
Palestinians that President Clinton pledged to deliver at the
October 1998 Wye River peace summit was delayed and almost lost
because the President presented Congress with a fait accompli. The
Clinton Administration should not risk stumbling into a similar
embarrassment in the future.
What Washington Should Not Do
- Do not commit U.S. peacekeeping troops to
the Golan Heights.
The
Golan Heights present a more formidable peacekeeping challenge than
the existing U.S. peacekeeping mission on the Sinai Peninsula, the
Multinational Force and Observers (MFO), which monitors compliance
with the security arrangements of the 1979 Egypt-Israel peace
treaty. The MFO is often cited as a model for a U.S. peacekeeping
presence on the Golan, but U.S. peacekeepers in the Golan Heights
would operate in a markedly different geographic, military, and
political environment. Rather than being deployed in a vast desert
far from the main bodies of the opposing military forces, they
would be stationed in a constricted area, sandwiched between large
armored forces in positions that would quickly become important
military objectives if fighting were to break out.
An
MFO-like monitoring force would be small and lightly armed; but a
small, light force would have difficulty protecting itself from
terrorist attacks that may emanate from Lebanon, let alone a Syrian
military offensive. Unlike the remote, sparsely populated Sinai
Peninsula, the Golan Heights would be a more hospitable operating
theater for terrorists from Lebanon or living among civilians in
the Golan Heights.
Therefore, a U.S. peacekeeping force in
the Golan would have to be large enough to deter attacks from any
source and defend itself. In other words, it would have to be a
large combat formation, configured for possible combat, with
appropriate rules of engagement. But a large force, such as an
armored or mechanized infantry brigade, would be both costly and a
drain on the U.S. military presence in more important strategic
regions, such as the Persian Gulf or Korean peninsula.
U.S.
forces on the Golan would be inadequate to defend Israel if it is
attacked. They likely would constitute only a marginal military
deterrent to Syria and would be unable to provide adequate early
warning to Israel. In essence, they
would serve as a trip wire in the event of another war.
The
real rationale for the U.S. presence is not military, but
political--to reassure a nervous Israeli public about security
concerns that the United States would be in no position to remedy
if conflict were to erupt. This is dangerous because it could
engender a false sense of security that could lead the Israelis to
take more risks in peace negotiations with Syria than they
otherwise would.
The Effect on Combat
Readiness.
A peacekeeping presence in the Golan would be a further drain on
U.S. military forces, which already are stretched thin around the
world. The United States cannot afford to commit an ever-larger
proportion of its declining active-duty forces to worldwide
peacekeeping operations. Sending U.S. troops to Kosovo and Bosnia
already has depleted America's strategic reserve and undermined
readiness. It should be remembered that the peacekeeping
commitments to Kosovo and Bosnia were made in addition to existing
U.S. security commitments in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.
For
a Golan peacekeeping mission to be credible would require the
commitment of a large force consisting of at least a heavy
brigade--roughly 5,000 troops. To maintain a long-term deployment
of this force, three brigades would have to be dedicated to the
mission: one on deployment, one recovering and retraining after
returning from the mission, and one training and preparing to
deploy on the mission. This is roughly 10 percent of the U.S.
Army's active-duty combat strength, a prohibitively high burden for
an open-ended peacekeeping mission. If the United States were
suddenly faced with conflict in other regions of the world, such as
the Persian Gulf or the Korean peninsula, the forces on the Golan
could well be needed to protect vital U.S. national interests.
An
open-ended peacekeeping mission on the Golan also would reduce the
military effectiveness of troops available for other missions.
Troops returning from the Golan would need many months of
retraining to regain the warfighting skills that inevitably would
have atrophied during the peacekeeping deployment.
The Exposure to Terrorism.
Golan peacekeepers would be vulnerable to significant terrorist
threats. They would be stationed close to southern and eastern
Lebanon, the staging areas for some of the world's most dangerous
terrorists, including Hezbollah, the militant pro-Iranian terrorist
group responsible for the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks
in Beirut. Hezbollah and other terrorist groups operating inside
Lebanon have a history of attacking Americans. They would have even
more reason to use terrorism to disrupt a U.S.-brokered peace
agreement that they violently oppose.
Syria itself is one of the chief exporters
of international terrorism. The Assad regime
repeatedly has used terrorism as an adjunct of foreign policy in
inter-Arab politics, in Lebanon, and against Israel. Assad also
supported Hezbollah's terrorist campaign against U.S. peacekeeping
forces in Lebanon in 1983-1984. Given Syria's success in helping
Hezbollah to drive U.S. peacekeepers out of Lebanon in 1984, Assad
could well try a similar strategy in the Golan to seek the removal
of the peacekeepers. Even if Assad should cooperate in restraining
terrorism, however, Iran, Iraq, and Libya could support
Lebanon-based terrorist proxies against U.S. forces in the
Golan.
Since U.S. troops would be a lightning rod
for terrorism, particularly because of America's brokering of the
Syrian-Israel peace accord, they should not be placed in harm's way
to man a Golan peacekeeping operation. If peacekeepers are needed
to monitor a Syrian-Israeli peace treaty, they should be drawn from
other countries. The United Nations Disengagement Observer Force
has deployed peacekeepers from Austria, Canada, Finland, and Poland
on the Golan Heights for over two decades to monitor compliance
with the 1974 Israeli-Syrian Disengagement Agreement.
- Do not push Israel into any settlement
that it believes would undermine its security.
President Clinton must remember that
Israel is a close ally: one that has fought three wars with Syria,
itself an ally of the Soviet Union during the Cold War. A stable
Middle East peace cannot be imposed by an external power and must
be based on a strong security foundation. The United States should
allow the two sides to work out their differences, not intervene on
Syria's behalf to force concessions from Israel that could
undermine its security.
- Do not rush the negotiations
needlessly.
At
Shepherdstown, President Clinton set a two-month deadline for
negotiating a Syrian-Israeli peace accord. Assad's declining health
and the approaching end of President Clinton's term in office put
additional pressure on the parties to reach a rapid settlement.
But
a good agreement is more important than a quick one. The
Syrian-Israeli rivalry is likely to remain stable as long as Israel
enjoys military superiority. Further, signing a deal with Assad is
no guarantee that his successor will observe its terms. Moreover,
the longer Israel waits, the better its chances of extracting a
more advantageous deal from Syria may be. Assad's successor will be
weaker and probably more amenable to compromise. Even if Assad
survives his ailments for an extended period, the Syrian economy is
ailing, and this will generate growing pressure on Damascus to
improve relations with the West to gain aid, trade, foreign
investment, loans, and technology.
Time
is growing short for President Clinton to secure his "legacy" and
for Assad to engineer a smooth transition of power to his chosen
successor, Bashar. In the words of one Israeli expert on the Syrian
economy, however, "a rush by Israel to reach agreement with Assad
makes about as much sense as the United States rushing in 1989 to
reach agreements with the Soviet Union." Washington should
not undermine Israeli efforts to negotiate a stable peace by
imposing arbitrary negotiating deadlines.
- Do not give foreign aid to Syria merely as
a reward for peace.
Under no circumstances should the U.S.
promise foreign aid to Syria as a sweetener for a peace agreement.
The prospective return of the Golan Heights and peace itself are
Syria's peace dividends. The Assad regime should not expect to be
showered with U.S. aid as Anwar Sadat's Egypt was after the 1979
Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty.
First of all, Sadat did not support
terrorism against Americans. Second, he took great personal and
political risks to achieve a diplomatic breakthrough and push for a
genuine reconciliation between Egypt and Israel, unlike Assad who
insists implacably on Syria's maximum demands as if Syria had won,
rather than lost, three wars with Israel. Finally, Sadat led Egypt
out of the Soviet orbit and into a strategic alliance with the
United States, while Assad led Syria into a close alliance with the
Soviet Union, signing a 1980 Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation
with Moscow and inviting 13,000 Soviet and East European advisers
into Syria.
Syria today does not have the same
geopolitical importance that Egypt enjoyed in 1979. It does not
have as large a population, as impressive a military force, or the
same claim to Arab leadership that Egypt enjoyed. Moreover, now
that the Cold War has ended and there is no Soviet Union seeking to
outbid the West for the allegiance of regional powers, the
perceived value of Syrian cooperation on foreign policy and
security issues also has declined. In fact, the collapse of its
superpower patron and the poor prospects for its stagnant socialist
economy have given Damascus increasing incentives to cooperate with
the West and escape its self-imposed isolation.
These factors, combined with the political
vulnerability of the Assad regime over the impending succession
struggle, mean that Assad needs the United States more than the
United States needs Assad.
Instead of rewarding Syria with foreign
aid for a peace settlement that advances Syrian interests,
Washington should reward Syria with foreign aid only if Damascus
actively supports U.S. foreign policy goals outside the
Arab-Israeli peace process. No aid should be promised unless Syria
not only signs a peace treaty with Israel, but also takes concrete
actions to cooperate with the United States in fighting terrorism,
containing Iraq, isolating Iran, halting drug smuggling, and
promoting a stable and independent Lebanon.
- Do not give U.S. arms to Syria.
It
does not make sense to give Damascus U.S. arms that could be used
against Israel, Jordan, Turkey, or the Syrian people if they should
rebel against the Assad dictatorship, as they did in 1982. Moreover, giving
arms to Syria would require giving more arms to Israel to
counterbalance the threat of those arms that are in Syrian
hands.