The president fears confronting Assad because of the effect it might have on his nuclear diplomacy.
By JOHN BOLTON, WSJ
Despite months of negotiations by former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan and extensive Security Council deliberations, hostilities in Syria continue. Although overall violence is down slightly and the council has increased U.N. observers to 300, the civilian death toll continues to rise. Syria’s dictatorship ignores Mr. Annan’s “cease fire,” and Bashar al-Assad himself shows no signs of stepping down.
President Obama seems paralyzed for two basic reasons: First, he is committed to a U.N. process almost certainly doomed to failure; and second, he fears taking on the real nemesis in Syria, namely Iran’s ayatollahs.
The decision to deploy additional military observers was a positive step but the existing observers have hardly displayed much initiative. They have, for instance, declined to monitor anti-Assad demonstrations to avoid, they said, making their mission part of the dispute. One might confuse this with satire were the consequences not so grave.
Perhaps recognizing the U.N.’s lack of real impact to date, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently suggested that the Security Council impose an arms embargo against Syria’s government if hostilities continue. It was unclear, however, if other governments would agree. Neither Russia nor China has responded positively. Given their February double veto against stronger sanctions, there is considerable doubt that they would ever allow an effective arms embargo, especially given Russia’s long-standing arms-supplier relationship with Syria.
An enforceable U.N. embargo would require invoking Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter, to restore “international peace and security,” which Moscow and Beijing intensely distrust, particularly after Libya. There, the Security Council acted ostensibly to prevent humanitarian tragedy, and NATO then used the mandate to facilitate ousting Moammar Gadhafi. Russia and China will not repeat that mistake. Moreover, they could insist on a total weapons ban, both to Assad and the opposition. In the U.N. world of moral equivalence, they would almost certainly prevail, as with the 1992 arms embargo when the former Yugoslavia broke up.
Mr. Obama’s real failure is not reliance on the cumbersome, ineffective U.N., but his unwillingness to confront Iran, which is determined to maintain Assad in office. Tehran has long treated Syria as a satellite, part of its regional arc of influence that includes terrorist Hezbollah, now politically and militarily dominant in Lebanon. It is prepared to shed considerable Syrian blood to save Assad. The Islamic Republic has supplied arms and financial assistance to the Assad regime, and Iranian Revolutionary Guards officers are on the ground in Syria aiding government forces.
Mr. Obama knows that if he confronts Iran directly in Syria, any chance will disappear for a negotiated settlement to Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons. While he should have long ago understood that diplomacy will never persuade Iran to renounce its objective of becoming a nuclear power, he has not. So despite Iran’s obvious role (backed by Russia and China) in defending Assad’s brutality, the president cannot bring himself to admit his Iran policy’s futility. And Mr. Obama is entirely unwilling to risk foreign adventures that might imperil his re-election.
Washington needs to acknowledge that effectively challenging Assad means moving beyond sanctions and diplomacy, and toward regime change in Tehran. Mr. Obama seems unable or unwilling to understand that Iran is an enemy of the U.S. and that its nuclear and regional hegemonic ambitions must be thwarted, or the ayatollahs overturned. Such an uncertain leader cannot handle a critical confrontation effectively. Unfortunately, we may have to wait for a more resolute president rather than proceed and fail in Syria with a weak one.
Israel may not be willing to wait for a firm American hand to deal with Iran’s nuclear-weapons program. And if the conflict in Syria is concluded in Assad’s (and Tehran’s) favor, it could well have significant negative implications for Israel, and for peace and security in the Middle East as a whole. That will be the real cost of Mr. Obama’s fruitless deference to the U.N. process, and of his unwillingness to confront Iran’s mullahs.
Mr. Bolton, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, is the author of “Surrender Is Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations” (Simon & Schuster, 2007). He advises Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign.
Mr. Obama did not trigger what is going on in the ME but evidently he supported it wholeheartedly with its deleterious consequences for progress in the Muslim world.
He never realized that the dreams of his father could not have been his own dreams because he lives in different times.
The democrat Jews behave not differently so far from the the US Jews who decided against assisting the European Jews during the 2nd WW. Leading from behind implies that some else will show him what should be done. Does David need to show the example to Goliath!!!
The whole key to Obama’s reluctance to do anything serious about Syria is to be found in Bolton’s last paragraph. Obama’s central objective as POTUS is to force a Saudi-style “peace plan” down Israel’s throat. Unless Assad can be replaced by the MB in some form – and it was reported here on IP by Ted that Hillary would only meet wit MB-affiliated opposition groups – Obama will do nothing. He’d rather keep Assad in power than have him replaced by a truly reform-minded leadership such as what could come about if we backed the Syrian Democratic Coalition, just like he did nothing to suport genuine reform elements in Iran when we had the chance back in ’09. Bottom line: pressure on Israel must be maintained at all costs. This has been the guiding principle of Obama’s presidency all along.
Sam’s predictions certainly are logical, if only history proved to be so logical. There are so many variables that so many things can turn on a dime and effect and change so many other factors. But all in all Sam’s predictions are the most probable based on the actual facts on the ground at this moment as opposed to so many other people’s predictions which are based not so much on facts but on their hopes.
@ Samuel Fistel:
THE ME ‘PEACE PROCESS’ SHUFFLE…….
Israeli PM Netanyahu:
We’ve always been ready for the Arabs to end their dirty
terrorist war, so we’ll go through the motions until they do
The moment the Arabs lay down their weapons and end the war, there’s nothing left but the finalizing of the details between the two sides, with a bit of give and take and a signing of a lasting agreement. That’s what Israel has been pushing for ever since they formed themselves into a political body and then became a state.
The Arabs don’t want that, they have used every means at their dispossal to torpedo every chance for peace with the Jewish state, through open war and then through a dirty terrorist proxy war accompanied with a vigorous propaganda campaign to deligitimize Israel on the international stage.
Seeing that anti-Semitism is a common thread that binds many of these nations together, (they may hate each other but they hate the Jews even more) such a campaign has therefor been met with great success, all the while denying that anti-Semitism has nothing to do with their over-the-top characterization of Israelis and their vilification of the Jewish state.
So Israel will now go throught the motions and pay lip service to the Obama administration, knowing full well that all sides know how weak the PNA is, how powerful the Hamas is, and the unwillingness of the Arabs, and especially their patrons, the Iranians and the Syrians to give up on their war against the Jews. KGS
Hi, Sam
I always enjoy reading your comments, because you present a different point of view from the others on many issues. In response, let me chime in first about Syria: With the latest spate of bombings by the thousands of Al Qaeda-Iraq operatives that apparently have slipped into the country with Obaman blessing, we now have a “good cop” and a “bad cop” in the area:
1. Good Cop
Al Qaeda, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the “Free Syria” movement, Islamic Brotherhood
2. Bad Cop
Iran, Assad, Hizbullah
We also have the “Crooks”:
Israel, and the God of Israel
The United States, aka Barack Obama, is not committing himself to any side. He is the conductor on the podium, standing six inches above the riff-raff. End of analysis. I’m more interested in your closing remark:
I watched a PBS propagandamentary last night, about the ecology movement. There were many flash-back shots to the 1950s, with scenes of cities filled with smokestacks belching out pollution. Those smokestacks no longer belch anything today, of course, and our cities have become environmentally pristine. That’s because we have “progressed” from the age of manufacturing to the age of… joblessness… and the belching smokestacks are now in China. What will China do when they, too, “progress” to joblessness? Will they, too, become a nation of lawyers, doctors and paper-pushing bureaucrats, with
MexicansIndonesians doing all the work?Maybe they will; but what will the Americans be doing — not the doctors and the lawyers, but the Americans, the jobless ones who can’t afford Mexican housekeepers? Will we quietly content ourselves with cottage industries, making cheap toys and printed circuit boards for the Chinese? When I was in China, visiting my “Tai Tai wife” daughter, I noticed American construction workers in downtown Guangzhou, and an itinerant Australian who planned to get part-time work teaching English. Will China become swarmed with Americans, who go there as domestic servants and field workers? Maybe. No skin off my nose — I’ve worked alongside Mexicans, for lower pay than they got, and all of us are learning Chinese. By God’s grace, we will survive.
We can’t speculate about the future. There simply is no precedent to the Industrial Revolution spreading into the whole globe. Widespread birth control and abortion are becoming the norm, along with SEVERE disruptions to the social structure. China “solved” its demographic problems with the “one child” law; but it has had enormous social consequences. China is a family-based society; its whole fabric has been tied up in families for thousands of years,and now it is being thrust into a society with no social underpinnings. The same is happening in the US and Europe, and the whole world. With the old pattern completely torn out of the cloth, people are looking for a new tapestry to be woven, with a new morality and a new god.
Heaven help us, when we’re called upon to submit to the new “embroiderers”.
Will the arab spring lead to a Jewish Israeli summer?
Jewish Israel is watching with amazement and happiness as the arabs self-destruct. Egypt is bankrupt. The islamists will take over the government, and end any chance for economic improvement, if there ever was any. The Egyptian military will be weakened. They will have manpower, but little modern equipment.
Syria is in a mad dog death match between the majority oppressed sunnis and the minority alawite tyrants. When the sunnis finally win this war of attrition, then Syria will be both economically bankrupt and physically destroyed.
Gaza is in the process of being absorbed by Egypt.
Jordan will become Palestine sooner or later, since Jordan is majority palestinian and the heir to the current king has a palestinian mother. The Palestinian Authority in the West Bank is illegitimate (their terms of office expired long ago, and they won’t hold any new elections). The Palestinian Authority will dissolve, and the west bank palestinians will become Jordanian citizens under Israeli security control.
Israel will annex Area C of the West Bank (60% of the West Bank; suitable for Israeli homes, but previously uninhabited by muslims because it has no surface water).
The wild card is the world economy. It looks like the euro will collapse, along with the economies of all the individual european nations (none of them can compete with China). It is unlikely America can go on living beyond its means by endless borrowing and printing new dollars. A second Great Depression will hurt almost everybody.