Tag Archives: Vladimir Putin

Government, Middle East, Politics, Russia, Syria, United Nations, United States

The agreement between the United States and Russia on Syria’s chemical weapons…

SYRIA: US/RUSSIAN AGREEMENT

The agreement between the United States and Russia on chemical weapons in Syria is an important piece of political diplomacy. The idea that Bashar al-Assad could avoid military action by giving up his chemical stockpiles was much more than an ‘off-the cuff’ remark by John Kerry, US Secretary of State, who expressed that view in London last Monday.

The notion that has been circulating that Vladimir Putin has outsmarted the United States, his country’s historical adversary, by somehow exploiting Mr Kerry’s blunder must surely be a mistake. The U.S. has wanted this deal, proved by its tireless efforts to get it, and the world should welcome it too.

The agreement is a step in the right direction. The deal provides for the destruction of Assad’s chemical arsenal under United Nations supervision by the middle of next year. The prospects of the deal being met must be weighed against the risk of Syria’s chemical weapons being seized upon by Iran, or even Russia itself, as potential complicity creeps in.

While Mr Kerry has talked up the prospect of the UN authorising military action if Assad failed to comply, those words are not in the text of the agreement, and Russia would have to agree that the terms of the deal had been breached.

The mere fact that an agreement has been reached, however, has two consequences. First, it does make it less probable that Assad or his commanders will use chemical weapons again, because to do so would politically embarrass Mr Putin. This has pertinence because the need to deter the Assad regime from using gas again was the strongest argument in favour of the limited punitive action proposed by President Obama. Second, it means that Russia is now engaged in a process that could lead to an eventual end to the bloodshed.

The parochial argument that the delay in air strikes sought by British MPs in the House of Commons by providing the time for a deal to be made does have substance. Globally, the return of Russia to the international stage is one of the more important changes in geopolitics in recent years. That may be a response to the winding down of American interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan, though Russia stepping forward was far from inevitable. Yet, again, if the U.S. had not taken the initiative in the region, no one else would have done so, particularly with Britain baulking at the prospect of becoming embroiled in another war. That Russia is now engaged in the search for an end to the brutality and carnage in Syria is a hopeful change.

For there to be a settlement in Syria, Iran will also need to be consulted as it too is also a patron of the Assad regime. We should not naively assume that the recent election of the ‘reform-minded’ Hassan Rouhani as Iranian president – with recent expressions of goodwill to Israel – mean that Iran is now a force for peace in the region.

But the agreement could bring the Iranian leadership to accept that its interests are best served by following the Russian lead and sharing some of the responsibility for ending a conflict in Syria that has claimed the lives of more than 100,000 people.

The deal between the United States and Russia deserves a cautious approval, even though the prospects for a settlement in Syria still remain particularly distant.

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Britain, France, Government, Middle East, Politics, Russia, Syria, United Nations, United States

The U.S. holds fire by giving a Russian-backed proposal a chance over Syria…

SYRIA

The diplomatic momentum over Syria in the last 24 hours has surpassed all expectations and has been quite breath-taking. Events may have unfolded through an inopportune comment made by the U.S. Secretary of State, John Kerry, during his visit to London at the beginning of this week.

A week in politics is a long time, or so it’s said. No more is this evident than in America where, one minute, President Obama was preparing to tour the US talk shows to appeal for Congressional and public support for air strikes; the next, he was actually on those talk shows, airing qualified support for a Russian proposal to place Syria’s chemical weapons stocks under international control and supervision. The Congressional vote, which was widely seen as a make-or-break for Mr Obama, has been shelved, and France has been working hard in delivering a draft UN Security Council resolution that aims to put the Russian proposal into effect.

Startling, because, in just 24 hours, we have gone from the tense threshold of unilateral U.S. military action and a Cold War-style US-Russia rift to a proposal on which almost everyone can agree – the exception being possibly Syria’s anti-Assad opposition.

The French draft resolution is said to provide not only for the weapons stocks to be controlled, but destroyed, and for any breach to be met with ‘extremely serious consequences’.

If those consequences are assumed to include military action, if non-compliance was forthcoming, there is a risk that the resolution will attract a new Russian veto. The West should be wary of Moscow’s proposal that may have been conjured up to head-off U.S. air strikes, by merely serving as a delaying tactic. An apt tactic some may say, presaging months of Iraq-style disputes about access and monitoring.

But from another perspective it hardly matters why the international appetite for a military response is so small – however limited in intent and however heinous the crime that inspired it.  That could be put down to the ‘war weariness’ of campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, much of which still colours the political debate. But it may also be due to the difficult geopolitics surrounding Syria, a conflict recognised as being far too complex for punitive resolution.

If democratically leaders cannot convince their electorate on something as grave as peace and war, it will be time for them to pause and consider whether another answer might be found.

Any solution that deters outside military intervention, while removing the insidious threat of chemical weapons, would surely benefit everyone, no more so than the escalating numbers of Syrian civilians who find themselves in the middle of a war zone.

Any UN-sponsored agreement along the lines of a credible Russian proposal could help to open the way for wider talks. While this may be premature by jumping ahead to soon, the priority must be to ensure that the diplomatic process is not written off at a whim before it has been given a real chance to start.

The off-the-cuff remark by John Kerry in London does appear to have opened the door to a diplomatic resolution of the stand-off over Syria’s deployment of chemical weapons. In what was deemed a half-hearted suggestion by Mr Kerry that Bashar al-Assad’s arsenal be placed under international control and destroyed, the response was so swift that it is inconceivable not to see some choreography at work (or else just sheer relief).

Vladimir Putin picked up on the idea, and immediately pressed the Assad regime to agree. Washington said that if Syria did comply it would put on hold plans for a military strike in retaliation to the atrocity in Damascus last month. The United States, Britain and France have now tabled a resolution in the UN Security Council.

Nonetheless, sceptics are entitled to be suspicious. Why, for example, has Mr Putin, for so long the barrier to any action against Assad, turned peacemaker? Is this a delaying tactic to protect his Syrian ally, or one that is aimed in further undermining the already weak public support in the West for military strikes?

And, how will it be possible to logistically verify the destruction of the chemical weapons while civil war rages on in Syria? Will Assad call a ceasefire to allow inspectors to do their work, and if so will the rebels agree to one? The highly complex process of confirming whether Syria has complied would be fraught with difficulty, and could take several years to complete.

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Foreign Affairs, Government, Middle East, Politics, Russia, Syria, United Nations, United States

G20 and America’s defining moment…

WATERSHED MOMENT

The G20 summit that ended in St Petersburg yesterday failed to produce any kind of agreement on the Syrian crisis. The chasm and bridge separating the United States and Russia on Syria is as wide as it has ever been. Yet, few such gatherings in recent years have offered a truer picture of how and where the real balance of global power lies. A genuine watershed in international affairs may at last have arrived; replacing a vestige of what has been referred to of late as the ‘Arab Spring’ – a term synonymous with upheaval and chaos spreading through many Islamic states.

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The two-day gathering in St Petersburg have confirmed many things. It underscored, for example, just how determined Vladimir Putin is in reasserting Russia on the world stage. It displayed quite clearly, too, that a mercantilist China will do nothing to unsettle its economic interests, and in the process laid bare Europe’s total inability to act on its own.

A senior Kremlin official was reported to have said that no one pays any attention to Britain, a ‘small island’. But could the same not be said of the rest of the EU? Germany, for instance, Europe’s economic powerhouse, is notable only for its deafening silence. France, eager to push a military agenda in punishing the Assad regime for its alleged use of chemical weapons, is unwilling to do so without America’s lead. Other G20 participants wring their hands in aghast and disbelief at what is happening in Syria, but most are keen to shriek away from any involvement. At a moment of high international drama, it leads us back – as it invariably does – to the United States and its role in the world.

It shouldn’t have required a Kremlin official to point out Britain’s diminished influence in the world; the empire ended more than half-a-century ago. But, like it or not, with the United Nations no more than a fractious and divided talking shop, the U.S. is the closest thing we have to a global policeman. No country, it has been argued, has the right to behave as such, and America’s actual ability to change history, for all its military might and superpower status, is sometimes exaggerated – not least by itself. We need to look no further than the sorry state of Iraq, a decade after George W Bush’s invasion, to provide clarity to the argument. In any major crisis, however, all eyes turn to Washington, as they are now in Syria as the regime is accused of violating a ban on the use of chemical weapons. Syria is a signatory against the banned use of such weapons, and yet here we have a paralysed UN Security Council that is powerless to enforce an international binding treaty.

With a vote in Congress on the use of U.S. military force in Syria to be held on the 9th September, the next few days will be decisive. Britain’s role on the world stage has been diminished given the veto in the House of Commons last week, but for President Obama the stakes are vastly higher. On Syria, Mr Obama’s approach has been feckless. First, he declared that Assad must go without saying how, and then laid down his ‘red lines’ over the use of chemical weapons. Later, he announced his decision to use force, and more recently has passed the buck to Congress on Capitol Hill. Deep down, many will suspect that he would prefer to stay well out of Syria given what has happened in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. Syria is ablaze and arguably much more contentious than anything the United States has dealt with in the past 30-years. Mr Obama’s uncertainty in how to proceed in Syria is resonating in all corners of the world.

If present indications are anything to go on, the House of Representatives could well follow the House of Commons in opposing military action. If so, a definitive moment will have arrived. Unlike David Cameron, Obama will either defy his legislature and go ahead with strikes, or he will acquiesce, and there will be no military response. If military action is taken off the table, not only would Barack Obama’s presidency be gravely weakened at home, but in the eyes of the world so too would the credibility of America as a global policeman. Either way, a watershed is at hand.

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