Tag Archives: Red Lines

Foreign Affairs, Russia, Syria, Ukraine, United Nations, United States

The west’s inaction in Syria highlights the impotence of the international community…

SYRIA

The West’s inability (or even insouciance) in becoming embroiled to counter the aggression of the regime of Bashar al-Assad against his own people in Damascus has led to the crumbling of resistance in the city. It was here that the rebel army had its stronghold. The evacuation of Homs is the personification of Western diplomatic failure.

It was a year ago now when the appalling bloodshed and mayhem of the civil war in Syria drew unanimous condemnation from the West. Assad’s use of chemical weapons against his own people last August added to the anger as the ‘red lines’ pronounced previously by President Obama had been crossed. America insisted that would trigger a military intervention in the event of that happening. But politicians then baulked as the Labour Party in Britain defeated the Government in the House of Commons on proposed military intervention. Those feelings rippled across to the United States, as politicians on either side of the Atlantic became forced into embracing a new isolationism born of years of war weariness in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The result has been a rebellion that can justly claim to have been let down by a collective failure of will in the West. It is a failure which could yet bear bitter fruit in Islamist anger exported by the disillusioned Syrian rebel fighters to the wider world. With the death toll spiralling with at least 150,000 dead, it is right to ask what has happened.

In looking for an answer, we should focus on two countries which have kept the Assad regime afloat for their own narrow and precarious interests – Iran and Russia. Tehran’s religious Ayatollah’s see Assad as an essential Shia bulwark against the power of Sunni forces in the region. Vladimir Putin’s motivation is as much to do with Russia’s current power games with the West as it is with the Syrian conflict on its own terms.

It was Mr Putin’s intervention last autumn that halted Western military action against Assad’s forces, preventing the opportunity that a decisive intervention could have brought by affording the rebels a chance to triumph. They needed at least to have secured a corner of a divided and disparate nation. Whilst the regime’s chemical weapons and capabilities appears to be on-course for being dismantled by the UN set deadlines, the cost – a real and tangible one in terms of geopolitics – has been the survival and, indeed, the strengthening of Assad’s reign in power, as its poorly-equipped rebel opponents fade. Recently, for instance, the Syrian tyrant has spoken of holding on to power for another six years, inconceivable to the West who had all but in name considered regime change a fundamental tenet in Syria three years ago.

President Putin’s observations would have noted the West’s stalemate and inaction in Syria, as well as calculating a likely similar reticence on intervention elsewhere by both Washington and London. The annexation of Crimea and continued power games in Ukraine, particularly in the east of the country, are proof of that.

Mr Putin, clearly emboldened, regards the West as weak. There is no real counter to Russian aggression and expansionism, other than the ranking up of political rhetoric by Western leaders. Yet, the harder Mr Putin acts abroad the stronger his position at home has become, where growing nationalist sentiment has garnered support for their president’s actions – a useful distraction given Russia’s floundering economy and weakening currency, clear effects of western imposed sanctions.

The rebels of Homs will be one of many aggrieved by the West’s inaction in Syria.

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Economic, Europe, Government, History, NATO, Politics, Russia, Society, United States

America has a role in supporting Europe. It isn’t about to turn its back…

AMERICA & EUROPE IN COUNTERING THE THREAT FROM RUSSIA

A European crisis has, once again, brought the ambitions of a second-term American president into the sharp light of day. Mr Obama could never have wished that he would land in Europe with the sole task of rallying some of his country’s oldest allies against the expansionist threats posed by Vladimir Putin of Russia. And yet, this is precisely the situation Barack Obama finds himself in.

Mr Obama arrived in The Hague and described Europe’s idiosyncratic collection of comatose economies as the ‘cornerstone of America’s engagement with the world’. His presence was enough to underline the realities of a new and emerging Cold War message: one to which America remains the ultimate guarantor of European security.

Whatever the intrinsic American wishes are, America cannot abdicate from that role. While history may reflect back the words of Franklin Roosevelt who pledged that America would never send US troops to fight in Europe, or even during Mr Obama’s own reign in office when he pronounced America’s ‘pivot’ and orientation towards Asia, Putin’s provocative stance and actions in Crimea has made such a profound difference to how the US reflects upon Europe. The United States accepts that the threats posed by Russia are serious and interconnected, and is turning away from the Pacific to behave in a way that every president from Truman to Reagan would have recognised.

Predicting what Putin will do next to enhance and strengthen his Russian Federation is difficult to determine. As a former KGB officer, he knows the high value placed on keeping his intentions as mysterious and covert as possible.

Psychology is also at play. The flint-eyed incumbent of the Kremlin strongly believes that Mr Obama is a president motivated far more by what is happening in the Pacific. To Mr Putin’s eye Barack Obama is a leader that is fundamentally uninterested in Europe and viscerally reluctant to use force of any kind. The Russian leader observed how Mr Obama steered clear of intervening in Libya by allowing Britain and France to claim the credit for toppling the Gaddafi regime. America’s role in that campaign was leadership from the back, rather than the front dynamism many would otherwise have expected.

And no-doubt the Kremlin hardliner would have taken special note when Bashar al-Assad made a mockery over Mr Obama’s ‘red lines’ and gassed hundreds of innocent Syrian civilians without paying a military price.

Mr Putin may even have thought this was an American president who could be pushed around. The disarmament treaty with Moscow, signed in 2010, for example, imposed far greater cuts on the US arsenal than was made to the Russian inventory.

Russia has remained committed in driving a wedge between Europe and America. Along with its actions in Ukraine, Russia has demonstrated the compelling necessity of NATO and the Atlantic Alliance. Such miscalculations may even impel Europe to realise the mistakes of continuously running down its defences.

America and Europe seem certain to respond with skill and resolve. Such a partnership can only make the world a safer place.

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Britain, Finance, Government, Middle East, United Nations, United States

Armed intervention in Syria is an agonising decision…

WESTERN INTERVENTION IN SYRIA

Western military intervention in Syria is moving closer. America’s reluctance to admit that its ‘red line’ had been crossed, said yesterday that there was ‘very little doubt’ that Bashar al-Assad’s forces had killed up to 1,500 civilians in a chemical attack last week. This followed statements from Britain that the only ‘plausible explanation’ for the deaths was an attack by Syrian government forces, and from France who said that a ‘reaction with force may be necessary’ if this is proved to be the case.

Though Damascus has belatedly signalled that UN inspectors can access the site of the attack, its prevarication over the last 6-days to allow inspectors in, means the evidence will have deteriorated or possibly even disappeared altogether.

The outcome of military intervention – most likely air strikes or cruise missile attacks from the U.S. naval fleet operating in the region – is impossible to predict. The threat to stability posed by the Syrian regime must now take account of the use of chemical weapons which violates international law, which implicitly undermines the authority of the UN. Whilst President Obama correctly identified it as a line which could not be crossed with impunity, failure to hold the Assad regime to account will only encourage more of the same. Mr Assad is known to have stockpiles not only of sarin gas, but also of the much more potent and deadly vx nerve gas, both types of chemical nerve agents having been moved around at will in the past few months. The strain is intensifying with refugees amassing on the borders with Jordon and Lebanon. Over the weekend, the UN declared that more than one million children have now been displaced in Syria.

The strategic risks of doing nothing are horribly clear. Armed intervention in a disintegrating Syria is an agonising choice, because the domino effect is an important factor in the equation – Iran, for example, will take heart in its pursuit of a nuclear warhead, which would possibly prompt others to follow suit in a Middle East nuclear arms race, including Israel moving closer towards unilateral military action against Tehran’s uranium enrichment programme.

One may hope that the acceptance by Syria’s backers, Russia and Iran, that chemical weapons have been used will lead to a unanimous Security Council resolution at the UN which will force Assad and his opponents to the negotiating table. That hope may well remain a pious one.

Last week’s hideous images of gassed children mean something must now be done. There can be no further delays, and contingencies should be activated in dealing with the flood of refugees pouring over the Lebanese and Jordon borders: quotas, for instance, should be drawn up in granting many of them asylum – as happened in Indochina after the fall of Saigon in 1975. A humanitarian and emergency response is now desperately needed.

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