http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324094704579066774128762480.html?mod=opinion_newsreel
The President lets Putin outmaneuver him on Syrian chemical arms.
- What could be worse for America’s standing in the world than a Congress refusing to support a President’s proposal for military action against a rogue regime that used WMD? Here’s one idea: A U.S. President letting that rogue be rescued from military punishment by the country that has protected the rogue all along.
That’s where President Obama now finds himself on Syria after he embraced Russian President Vladimir Putin‘s offer to take custody of Bashar Assad’s chemical weapons. The move may rescue Mr. Obama and Congress from the political agony of a vote on a resolution to authorize a military strike on Syria. But the diplomatic souk is now open, and Mr. Obama has turned himself into one of the junior camel traders.
What a fiasco. Secretary of State John Kerry, of all people, first floated this escape route for Assad on Monday in Europe where he was supposed to be rallying diplomatic support for a strike. The remark appeared to be off-the-cuff, but with Mr. Kerry and this Administration you never know. In any case before Mr. Kerry’s plane had landed in the U.S., Russia’s foreign minister had leapt on the idea and proposed to take custody of Assad’s chemical arsenal to forestall U.S. military action.
The White House should have rebuffed the offer given Russia’s long protection of Assad at the United Nations—a fact noted with scorn on Monday by Mr. Obama’s national security adviserSusan Rice. Instead Mr. Obama endorsed the Russian gambit as what “could potentially be a significant breakthrough.” The Senate immediately called off its Wednesday vote on the military resolution. By Tuesday Assad had accepted the offer that he hopes will spare him from a military strike.
France will press for a U.N. Security Council resolution supposedly for U.N. inspectors to supervise the dismantling of Syria’s stockpiles, though Russia will no doubt try to put itself in the lead inspecting role. On Tuesday Russia was even objecting to a French draft that would blame the Syrian government for using chemical weapons. Mr. Putin also insisted the U.S. must first disavow any military action in Syria, even as he and Iran make no such pledge.
On second thought, fiasco is too kind for this spectacle. Russia has publicly supported Assad’s denials that he used sarin gas, but we are now supposed to believe it will thoroughly scrub Syria of those weapons. We are also supposed to believe Assad will come clean about the weapons he has long denied having and still denies using.
Oh, and we can be confident of this because U.N. or Russian inspectors or someone will be able to locate the entire chemical arsenal, pack up arms that require enormous care in transport, and then monitor future compliance in the continuing war zone that is Syria.
Even if you believe this will happen, or is even possible, Assad will emerge without punishment for having used chemical weapons. He can also be confident that there will be no future Western military action against him. Mr. Obama won’t risk another ramp-up to war given the opposition at home and abroad to this effort.
Assad will also know he can unleash his conventional forces anew against the rebels, and Iran and Russia will know they can arm him with impunity. The rebels had better brace themselves for a renewed assault. At the very least, Mr. Obama should compensate for his diplomatic surrender by finally following through on his June promise to arm and train the moderate Free Syrian Army. Otherwise he runs the risk of facilitating an Assad-Iran-Russian triumph.
The alacrity with which Mr. Obama embraced Russia’s offer suggests a President who was looking for his own political escape route. His campaign to win congressional support has lost ground in the week since he needlessly blundered into proposing it. His effort to rally international support foundered last week at the G-20, where Mr. Putin looked dominant, and Mr. Obama’s approval rating has been falling at home.
In his Tuesday speech, Mr. Obama tried to put his best face on all of this. He took credit for it by claiming that his threat of “unbelievably small” military force, as Mr. Kerry advertised it, induced Assad to see the light. He claimed that he had personally floated the idea of international monitoring of Syria’s weapons. But this admission merely underscores how eager Mr. Obama is to find a Syria exit short of having to follow through on his military threats. His speech amounted to a call to support a military strike that his actions suggest he desperately wants to avoid.
The world will see through this spin. A British commentator in the Telegraph on Monday called this “the worst day for U.S. and wider Western diplomacy since records began,” and that’s only a mild exaggeration. A weak and inconstant U.S. President has been maneuvered by America’s enemies into claiming that a defeat for his Syria policy is really a triumph.
The Iranians will take it as a signal that they can similarly trap Mr. Obama in a diplomatic morass that claims to have stopped their nuclear program. Israel will conclude the same and will now have to decide if it must risk a solo strike on Tehran. America’s friends and foes around the world will recalculate the risks ahead in the 40 dangerous months left of this unserious Presidency.
@ monostor:
Not sure.
@ Laura:
Do you think the Americans think at all?
That may be, but our enemies sure aren’t exhausted and they won’t stop trying to kill us. So how exactly do Americans think we stop these islamic jihadists?
yamit82 Said:
We have a strategic interest in preventing Syria/Iran from subverting the Middle East. No matter who wins in Syria, America will face a radical, terror-sponsoring anti-American Arab regime in that country. That’s a point I concede but America is not in a position to stop it militarily. Its like when the British withdraw west of the Suez in 1971. Someone else will have to do that job and fill the vacuum created by the withdrawal of American power from the Middle East. Russia is now in the drivers’ seat – America’s allies cannot rely on it to protect them when the chips are down. Americans are exhausted from all the foreign entanglements and are in no mood for more of them. Israel will have to draw the necessary conclusions.
Laura Said:
There are no good options. Only the least worse of all the bad options. We sought to stop the use of chemical weapons. But without a clearly defined strategy, America is not going to unseat the Assad regime or strip its Russian/Iranian protectors of their influence there. We can’t make things better but at least we could keep them from getting worse.
@ NormanF:
Well, many more Americans may die from those chemical weapons. I don’t want us take sides or pick winners and losers. But we can’t allow those chemical weapons on the loose or trust those Russian snakes with securing them.
NormanF Said:
WSJ is stupid. Putin saved Obama is more to the point.
NormanF Said:
America does have strategic interests in Syria because the road to Iran is through Syria and their Russian supporters.
Preventing nuclear proliferation in the ME is not an American strategic interest?
Preventing the Russians a strong foothold in the Med and the region is not an American strategic interest?
Forcing Israel to potentially use Israeli Nukes is an American interest?
American vacillation and flight from confrontation will drive past allies into Russian hands like Egypt and possibly Turkey?
If a Superpower does not behave like a Superpower and abdicates she cannot complain later when others fill the vacuum.
There is a moral obligation of the most powerful democracy to assert and even impose itself where the most blatant acts of immorality are perpetrated by the worlds worst villains. In any case Syria is no longer a country with a central authority and in control of it’s whole territory. Assad controls what he controls and that’s his authority. He is 100% dependent on the Iranians and Russians. But he can in desperation create the actual conditions of WW3. Either America removes the threat or it falls by default to Israel. America can do it almost cost free. Israel not so and that goes double for Iran.
Hysterical Hyperbole. Since when are standoff accurate weapons threatening “Amercan kids?”
The WSJ is really stupid! There are NO democrats in the Syrian opposition. There are Islamists and more particularly Al Qaeda. America should NOT be picking winners and losers in the Syrian civil war. Let Allah sort it out, let BOTH sides fight each other forever and may they both lose!
America doesn’t have any strategic interest in regime change in Syria. Sure, Assad is a mass murderer but his enemies are NOT angels. The Russians gave us a chance to walk away from a Middle Eastern Vietnam. We should be glad we did.
There is nothing in Syria to justify sending American kids to die there.