Saudi Arabia's Two-War Doctrine is Becoming a Reality

For decades after the end of the Second World War, the United States maintained a “two-war” defence doctrine. The military organised its capabilities around the idea that it should be able to fight two conventional wars, in two separate theatres, at the same time.

That, after all, had been the reality in the Second World War, when the US had to fight in Europe and the Pacific simultaneously.

The doctrine came to an end in 2010, and in the 60 years that it was active, it was never enacted. The nearest the US came in recent history were the two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, neither of which were conventional wars for long. Indeed, it was the inability to win those wars that finally pushed the US to change its policy.

A similar doctrine appears to be taking shape in Saudi Arabia, but the other way around. The kingdom is having to ramp up its military presence in response to multiple threats, not to meet some future perceived threat.

Saudi Arabia doesn't have the advantages that the US has long enjoyed, hidden away behind two oceans. In fact, Saudi Arabia faces serious challenges on at least three of its borders.

There is the long, porous border to the south with Yemen, currently the focus of its most serious military effort. There is the eastern flank, facing regional rival Iran. And there is its long northern border, the majority of which has Iraq on the other side. Only to the west, across the Red Sea, are there clear allies in Egypt and Sudan.

Saudi Arabia has not yet articulated its defence posture. But it does look as if it has taken the two-war doctrine as a starting point.

The Northern Thunder joint military exercises it is conducting with 20 other countries, touted as the largest joint military exercises ever conducted in the region, are a pointed message to its adversaries, whether states (Iran), regimes (Syria) or groups (ISIL).

That it is taking place in Saudi Arabia’s north is no coincidence. With a serious war underway to the south, the kingdom is seeking to show that it can, despite suggestions, fight on two separate fronts.

After all, if the country can project power with Northern Thunder, what is to stop it using that power farther north?

The obvious place for that power projection is Syria. Earlier this month, a Saudi official, Brigadier General Ahmed Al Asiri, suggested the kingdom could send ground troops to Syria to fight ISIL – although it is likely to seek support from its allies as well, some of whom are involved in Northern Thunder.

Taken together with other elements – Saudi fighter jets are now stationed at Turkey's Incirlik base, close to the Syrian border – it is hard to avoid the message that Saudi Arabia and its allies are prepared to involve themselves in the Syrian civil war, if need be.

But there’s a second part to any new defence doctrine, and that is the political aspect. Saudi Arabia’s new muscular military posture requires close cooperation between allies.

Northern Thunder, after all, is a follow-up to Abdullah Sword, Saudi Arabia’s 2014 military exercise that was, at the time, the largest it had ever conducted.

Abdullah Sword involved all the GCC countries except Qatar. Northern Thunder builds on it, expanding Saudi’s list of allies further.

The message is unmistakable. The Saudi-led coalition is expanding, not diminishing.

And it is in that that we can discern the real intention behind Northern Thunder. The Saudis are seeking to use the military exercises as a way to deepen the political coalition against Iran and any future Russia-Syria-Iranian axis.

Problems like Iran and Syria don’t have long-term military solutions. Iran’s re-emergence is not a one-off event; it is a process that will play itself out in various ways, affecting political alliances and diplomacy.

Saudi Arabia may be seeking to send a strong message to Tehran that it can defend itself against external aggression – even while involved in a conflict in which Iran is a proxy – but it is also preparing for the much longer political and diplomatic fight.

By assembling a 20-country coalition, Saudi Arabia is gathering its allies close, preparing to deepen ties between it and the Muslim world, so that when the inevitable diplomatic confrontation takes place with Iran, it will have the political capital to react.

That is the real intention behind Northern Thunder. The message being telegraphed is not merely that Saudi Arabia is ready to defend itself, but that it does not intend to do so alone.

Once the war games begin in northern Saudi Arabia, it will not be the strikes of lightning that matter so much, as the gathering of the clouds which precedes it.

falyafai@thenational.ae

On Twitter: @FaisalAlYafai

Syria: New Report Reveals 470,000 People Killed, 1.9 Million Injured And 4.5% Of Population Has Been Displaced So Far

Syria’s national wealth, infrastructure and institutions have been “almost obliterated” by the “catastrophic impact” of nearly five years of conflict, a new report has found. Fatalities caused by war, directly and indirectly, amount to 470,000, according to the Syrian Centre for Policy Research (SCPR) – a far higher total than the figure of 250,000 used by the United Nations until it stopped collecting statistics 18 months ago.


In all, 11.5% of the country’s population have been killed or injured since the crisis erupted in March 2011, the report estimates. The number of wounded is put at 1.9 million. Life expectancy has dropped from 70 in 2010 to 55.4 in 2015. Overall economic losses are estimated at $255bn (£175bn).
The stark account of the war’s toll came as warnings multiplied about Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, which is in danger of being cut off by a government advance aided by Russian airstrikes and Iranian militiamen. The Syrian opposition is demanding urgent action to relieve the suffering of tens of thousands of civilians.



The International Red Cross said on Wednesday that 50,000 people had fled the upsurge in fighting in the north, requiring urgent deliveries of food and water.


Talks in Munich on Thursday between the US secretary of state, John Kerry, and his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, will be closely watched for any sign of an end to the deadly impasse. UN-brokered peace talks in Geneva are scheduled to resume in two weeks but are unlikely to do so without a significant shift of policy.
Speaking in London on Wednesday, an opposition spokesman, Salim al-Muslet, said President Barack Obama could stop the Russian attacks. “If he is willing to save our children it is really the time now to say ‘no’ to these strikes in Syria,” he said. The Washington Post reported that Moscow had sent a letter to Washington proposing to stop bombing on 1 March.
Of the 470,000 war dead counted by the SCPR, about 400,000 were directly due to violence, while the remaining 70,000 fell victim to lack of adequate health services, medicine, especially for chronic diseases, lack of food, clean water, sanitation and proper housing, especially for those displaced within conflict zones.


“We use very rigorous research methods and we are sure of this figure,” Rabie Nasser, the report’s author, told the Guardian. “Indirect deaths will be greater in the future, though most NGOs [non-governmental organisations] and the UN ignore them.


“We think that the UN documentation and informal estimation underestimated the casualties due to lack of access to information during the crisis,” he said.
In statistical terms, Syria’s mortality rate increase from 4.4 per thousand in 2010 to 10.9 per thousand in 2015.
The UN high commissioner for human rights – which manages conflict death tolls – stopped counting Syria’s dead in mid-2014, citing lack of access and diminishing confidence in data sources.


The SCPR was based until recently in Damascus and research for this and previous reports was carried out on the ground across Syria. It is careful not to criticise the Syrian government or its allies – Iran, Hezbollah, Russia. And with the exception of Islamic State, it refers only to “armed groups” seeking to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad. But despite the neutral tone the findings are shocking.


In an atmosphere of “coercion, fear and fanaticism”, blackmail, theft and smuggling have supported the continuation of armed conflict so that the Syrian economy has become “a black hole” absorbing “domestic and external resources”.Oil production continues to be an “important financial resource” for Isis and other armed groups, it says.


Consumer prices rose 53% last year. But suffering is unevenly spread. “Prices in conflict zones and besieged areas are much higher than elsewhere in the country and this boosts profit margins for war traders who monopolise the markets of these regions,” it says. Employment conditions and pay have deteriorated and women work less because of security concerns. About 13.8 million Syrians have lost their source of livelihood.
“The common characteristics across all regions are lack of security, the allocation of all resources to the fighting, the creation of violence-related job opportunities and imposition of authority by force.”


The shrinking of the population by 21% helps explain the waves of refugees reaching Turkey and Europe. In all, 45% of the population have been displaced, 6.36 million internally and more than 4 million abroad. Health, education and income standards have all deteriorated sharply. Poverty increased by 85% in 2015 alone.
The report notes that the rest of the world has been slow to wake up to the dimensions of the crisis. “Despite the fact that Syrians have been suffering for … five years, global attention to human rights and dignity for them only intensified when the crisis had a direct impact on the societies of developed countries.”
The conflict “continues to destroy the social and economic fabric of the country with the intensification of international interventions that deepen polarisation among Syrians. Human development, rights and dignity have been comprehensively ruined.”


The report is entitled Confronting Fragmentation. Previous titles in the series track the unfolding of the world’s biggest humanitarian disaster: Syrian Catastrophe, War on Development, Squandering Humanity, and Alienation and Violence.