Gregg Carlstrom summarizes Obama’s confused messaging on Syria:
We are “seriously skeptical” of an offer, which we originally and accidentally proposed just a few hours earlier, to peacefully resolve a standoff over a “red line” which we accidentally set down last year. At the very least, it will delay for several weeks our response to a “deplorable” slaughter, our “Munich moment,” which we promise will be “unbelievably small and extremely limited.”
For anyone who closely followed yesterdays events (and the longer term issues) it is clear that the Obama administration had not planned for this development to happen. It was not the result of apt U.S. diplomacy but the result of another Kerry gaffe that Russia used to turn a terse situation into a win for nearly all sides.
The Russian initiative using Kerry’s offhand remark saves Syria from an imminent attack by U.S. forces that would have shifted the battlefield balance towards the foreign supported insurgents and terrorists. It reenforces Assad’s international position as the head of the state of Syria. It also saves the Obama administration from a serious defeat in Congress and from an embarrassing unilateral and illegal strike that would have been too big to be seen justified – internationally as well as domestically – and too small to placate the Israeli warmongers and other insurgency supporters.
The United Nations Secretary General, China, Britain, France and the Arab League welcomed the Russian initiative. Syria accepted it. Predictably the Syrian insurgents are against the Russian proposal as are the Israelis. They will not matter. The Obama campaign momentum towards war is now broken and can not be repaired. Going to war now would require a complete new propaganda campaign build on a different pseudo-rational cause.
France now proposes a UN Security Council resolution to underwrite the yet to be defined proposal. The U.S., Britain and France will try to put such a resolution under UN Chapter VII which would eventually allow for the use of force against Syria. Neither Russia nor China will agree to that. There is actually no need for a UN resolution at all though Russia may prefer to have some UNSC statement on the issue if only to pull the United States back into the realm of international law.
Syria’s chemical stockpiles can be put under international control by immediately handing the keys of the warehouses over to Russian and Chinese officers. Syria could then contact the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and ask for its inspectors to work with those foreign officers to compile and verify lists of the stockpiles and to create plans for their eventual destruction. The OPCW is a legal international organization in its own rights and not a United Nations agency. Syria would join the OPCW by signing and ratifying the Chemical Weapon Convention (CWC). Syria would inform the United Nations Secretary General of these steps. There is no legal reason at all for the United Nations or the Security Council to be involved in any of these steps.
The destruction of Syria’s stockpiles will take a long time. One would want to avoid to transport those chemicals and would preferably build a special handling and incineration facility somewhere in the Syrian desert to then destroy those chemicals and munitions. This may take, like in the United States, a decade or two or even longer.
I do not see any way the U.S. and its allies can reasonably press for a Chapter VII resolution. Syria declares, like many states did earlier, that it will voluntarily take the steps towards fulfilling the CWC. Why then should it, unlike any other countries before it, be threatened with force to do so? If there is to be a UNSC resolution on chemical weapons in the Middle East Russia and China must insist for it to cover all Middle East countries including of course Israel’s chemical weapons. It is an reasonable demand and will be rejected bei the U.S. which is then a good reason to blame it for a failing resolution.
If Obama is smart he will recognize that Russia pulled him back from destroying his presidency. He should use the moment to rethink his Syria strategy, to dissociate himself from the Saudi-Israeli-Turkish alliance to destroy Syria and to finally agree on a diplomatic-political solution for the Syrian people.